Between now and the last time I talked to you, Chaos Theory started working - it just downloaded another package.  I really have no idea what's going on with this thing.

(CW)TB

I had some questions about our new book that I figured I’d answer here rather than in emails.

Chaos Theory doesn't work any more than it ever did.  Summit Strike still does, so I guess I'm not sure which universe the "official" 360 compatibility list refers to.

(CW)TB

After seeing that Barbie Horse Adventures was on the list, and recalling this old strip, we really had no choice.

Xbox compatibility for the new system probably hits the high notes for the vast preponderance of gamers, and it should, because they know what people use their console for.  I've been in the frigid room with the equipment that runs Xbox Live, I know that they know what games are being played, how long, by whom, what they were wearing at the time, as well as their top ten albums, and if a constituency for a given title was ou there it was most likely prioritized - and then, whatever just worked got thrown on the list as well.

The issue is that playing old games isn't what I use backwards compatibility for.  I know there are "peeps" who need constant Halo 2 infusions, but I don't look back - I think of the original Xbox as a damned place, a Sodom and/or Gomorrah.  What I need is a technology that will ease the middle period, while the old box is still a viable development target at retail.  My audio/visual shelf is already a treacherous, high-stakes game of Jenga as it is.  There's no physical space for some Goddamn artifact up there.

I had access to the compatibility list when I brought it home, so I'm not saying that I was somehow deceived regarding the capabilites of the machine - they are simply unfolding a different strategy than the one in my naïve fantasy. 

They released a compatibility update earlier in December that added much of Ubisoft's Live ouvre for the original box, but a Halo issue caused them to pull it.  Between the time we wrote the strip on Friday and the time I finished this post, they appear to have re-released the compatibility update.  I'll verify this of course, I haven't seen it anywhere.  But having Chaos Theory back would take the sting out a litte bit.

(CW)TB


I know it's past visiting hours

The last two missions in the Chaos Theory co-op campaign - the ones that were available for download, didn't work, and were then removed - have just been made available again.  They already hit for the PC version, and months ago - but that's not the version I own.

(CW)TB

Our new book "Attack of the Bacon Robots" ships on the 25th of this month. To celebrate we’re going to do a book signing that day over at the Comic Stop in Lynwood. They will have around 400 copies of the book available. You should also be able to order it via Think Geek within the next few days, although it won’t ship until the 25th. This is really exciting for us. Dark Horse has been great to work with and the book turned out awesome. I hope you guys will come out to the Comic Stop at the end of the month and help us celebrate.

We need to stop writing comics around lunchtime, I'm thinking. 

Alan Wake is a game that emerged at E3, and then receded just as quickly - but if the sometimes wishful mathematics of retail websites hold, it's supposed to show up in stores around the end of the month.  There isn't much to know about the gameplay, but I do suffer from writer protagonitis, a condition that makes me unable to resist games, books, and movies that feature an author as the main character.  

Hatching at the end of January, it falls quite naturally into that belated Christmas only the gamer is privvy to.  Things came out this Christmas, and I purchased them with money, but there were games that I expected to constitute some portion of my seasonal revelry that never materialized.   This is because they were shunted into a kind of strange and wonderful second holiday, which extends from January clear through March - or, in the profane syllables of business language, Q1.

You don't need to look far to see that happy days are here again, and will be for months.  I'm thinking about the 360 specifically, because so many titles that were clearly meant to reside wrapped under pagan icons are starting to sheepishly emerge.  The launch got mixed reviews here and elsewhere, but those companies were developing that software on an essentially liquid platform.   Seeing those launch titles as I saw them in October, debased, their timely, functional release was a Christmas fucking Miracle.

Download the Fight Night 3 demo off Live if you want to see what happens when EA actually levels their considerable weaponry at next generation content.  I've had a lot of fun at their expense, but God damn.  I imagine getting the most out of a console becomes a lot easier when that console is not hypothetical.

Only one example, of course.  Over our the course of our three month festival, Oblivion will emerge from its namesake and take up its rightful place in my tray.   There are other "polished ports"  that will make themselves known, as well as a few unknown quantities, but by the time the first of March rolls around, the 360 will become a much less opaque proposition.  Xboxes and the Splinter Cells to prove them out is an old equation I'm not likely to tire of anytime soon.  Watching Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter warp and shift with each media drop has been fascinating, though. 

It went from being the most talked about clip at the last E3 to a series of screenshots which were mindblowing to a series of screenshots that were Goddamn .jpeg abortions to a series which looked okay, and everything I've seen recently seems to imply that we're edging back toward delicious.  

(CW)TB out.

there's still time

Mike Fehlauer just came in here, trying to start some shit, and I shot his contact out.  Velcro barbs raked across his cornea.  If you are considering rolling up in, ask yourself:  do you value your eyes?  How about the sensitive ocular nerve.   Where does that shit rank in your hierarchy? 

(CW)TB

Shortly before Christmas, we became obsessed with Nerf weaponry - to the extent that the interaction of face and dart needed to be set down in an organized, agreed upon way.  It really hasn't worked.  As is the way with rules, all we've managed to do is highlight those behaviors which are most delicious - and then dare a person to try them.

You can take Nerf very, very seriously, provided you can overlook the foam ordnance and blaring neon chamber.  Modifications for stock weapons (above and beyond your cosmetic improvements) are incredibly diverse, everything from tension spring replacements to a custom "burstcap" round whose nub marks the target with a tablespoon of hyrdrochloric acid.   

We have come to rely upon the Maverick for day in/day out foam combat, but we are considering a couple Nite Finders to serve as "go-to" sidearms.   Gabriel purchased the Rapid Fire awhile back, a twenty shot air-pump gatling contraption which is certainly intimidating but one rarely has time to reload it when harmless sucker-tips or haunting whistlers begin to fly. 

I haven't seen commercials of any kind for a very long time, so maybe my resistance is just low - but I had a dream about the N-Strike Unity System last night after seeing the video.  I too want to coalesce from the shadows and bring death.  Or, welts.  In any event, I want to shoot Robert.  He's made it clear, however, that if the arms race escalates to foam rocket launchers, he will leave the company.  I'm mulling it over.  

I've had a chance to play an almost stupid amount of Oasis since last we spoke, enough to see something almost like a Minesweeper RPG within it.  Understand that by that point, my eyes had been open for several hours without blinking.

(CW)TB out.


it's something that daisies all do

My brotherman Steven Lynch up at HardOCP just kicked over a link to his newest project - a watercooled 360, just like the title.  He gets a lot of use out of that 360 - he's a fixture on my Friends List, doing battle with Tiger Woods in the manicured battlefields we associate with the sport.  I wonder if this was a project box, or his daily machine.  I'll find out how it works for him long term.

(CW)TB

So I was hanging out with Gabe and he was like what do you want to do and i was like what do you want to do and he was like you want to make a comic or something and i was like okay.

It is finished.

If you came to PAX then I’m sure you are familiar with Optimus Rhyme. If you’re looking for something to do tonight you should head downtown and check them out along with some other “promising local bands” at Chop Suey. They will be taking part in “We Are The Champions: A Tribute To Queen” tonight at 8pm sharp. Its $5 at the door and it’s 21+. Optimus is scheduled to hit the stage at 11:00 to crank out some Queen covers. They told me it was not easy “optimusifying” Queen but they assure me they have done it.

When things are at their darkest, simply close your eyes and invoke the transformative power of commerce.

The Xbox has plenty of games that look good, and it ought to, given the vigor of its components:  but I don't think there's another game for the system that looks as good as Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. 

I like the game too, but you know what you're in for with a Splinter Cell  - sneakin', snappin', unbelievably bad "foreign" accents, etc.  It isn't the only piece of software out there to utilize technology which yelps "Hey!  This is what light is doing on this surface," but I feel comfortable saying that it's never been used more artfully.  It's like eighteen dollars now, if your little heart is set on proving me wrong or something.  You wont.

The "adversarial" multiplayer mode was a retooled version of Pandora Tomorrow's, with some new tech and considerably more elaborate maps that didn't quite stick the way the first one did.  It may be that the people I know had moved on to a new type of experience by then, but getting competitive at a Splinter Cell map is a frightfully comprehensive procedure that allows no half-measures.  Also, losing in Splinter Cell is really the most emasculating sensation.  Short of the medical procedure, I suppose.

Along with a hardcore online experience that was probably too hardcore for ninety-five percent of players, they included another game altogether - where the adversarial still ran on the old technology, the new co-op mode used the sparkling new engine that underpinned Chaos Theory itself.  Filled with two-player gaming experiments and novel action setpieces, it's the main thing I took away from Chaos Theory as a package.   This is Splinter Cell, for fuck's sake - it's an international powerhouse brand that doesn't need market inducements aside from a lengthy single player campaign and a new kind of multiplayer.  So, why did they do it?  I've never played anything like it.  It's the sort of thing we imagine doesn't happen in gaming anymore.

Maybe it doesn't, actually.  From the Game Informer article that broke the story on Splinter Cell: Double Agent, it looks like cooperative multiplayer with its own campaign parallel to the main story is a mutation that couldn't survive in the wild.  A facsimile of the experience will be available against "bots," essentially as a training mode for their rebuilt multiplayer that they hope will make the process less intimidating for new players.  It's probably the right choice, but the sensation that they were developing exclusively for me was intoxicating.

(CW)TB

Our epic tone poem continues apace.

The inversion of my expectations as regards the PSP and the Nintendo DS is something that I imagine will remain with me for a good while. 

I sometimes try to figure out exactly what my job is.  I settle on different definitions at different times, depending on a matrix of factors like blood sugar, time of  year, ambient light, sobriety, and so on.  The most basic expression of it is that I help you waste time, here on the International Cyber Web and elsewhere.  It might seem like people don't need help with that, but most people want their leisure time invested optimally and this is something we can help with.

I attended a Nintendo event before the DS materialized at retail that showed a company almost intimidated by the innovations of its own device - ports of various kinds and tenuous third party leftovers that seemed to point, noncommittally, in the direction of potential.  I grabbed a PSP that launched strong with a beautiful piece of hardware and several great looking games with wireless play in franchises and genres I'd love portable.  

User experience on the PSP - while the system is off, at any rate - really is amazing.

In those days, of course, Final Fantasy: Advent Children was practically launching with the system on UMD, heralding a new age of...  who knows what.  Even when I was absolutely sold on the device, I still thought it was a kind of wedge designed to project Sony's proprietary formats into the marketplace.  I'm not convinced this isn't true, but I also hoped that a strong lineup would emerge to blunt that position.

Every now and then something comes out for it that makes me somewhat less ashamed that I lauded their glossy brick to you with such force.  The media features of the machine are, no doubt, a great comfort to the beleaguered PSP owner.  In my defense, it was a tectonic shift - industry wise - and I lost my footing temporarily as the plates realigned.  I've felt guilty for months, digesting every milligram of PSP news for the standout title that will make me seem like a valid source of information, if only in retrospect.

The games hitting the DS now in their major franchises aren't the filthy ports with a few bonuses tacked on I feared would dominate the machine - they're actually the legitimate sequels, definitive versions that replace the old ones in terms of features and I daresay fun.   The new Animal Crossing game  for the DS is Animal Crossing II, with the multiplayer that was clamored for.  The Mario Kart that is out for the DS is the new Mario Kart.  Not the "portable version," not the constrained subset.  It's the most robust offering in the franchise.

It's so ridiculous to think that after all I've Goddamn spent this year, I keep coming back to a hundred and thirty dollar system to play these tiny thirty-five dollar games.    

(CW)TB out.

stop making fun of my pants

Uh-oh - looks like the situation has escalated. 

Typically around this time each year we break down the gaming experiences which have been most meaningful, or at any rate the ones that we can actually remember.  We used to do it by way of the "We're Right Awards," but somewhere along the way we decided that actually making comics might be a good idea for our Internet comic website.

I still like drudging up and subsequently rinsing off an entire year's worth of these cherished adventures, even if we don't devote our strip to the process.  So, unless something bizarre emerges which we would refuse to discuss at our peril, we can spend the next few days remembering these things together.

For example, though it just edged its way in on the cube, Resident Evil 4 rightly belongs on any proper accounting of the year of our lord two-thousand and five.  I suppose that's another reason this kind of enumeration - what Jeremy Parish might call a hagiography - has value.  I crave novelty like anyone else, and I can be devoured by it, and relinquishing my will to the simulation - playing absolutely - is sort of what I do.  There are times when something I've really enjoyed looks pretty mechanical and uninspired a few months out.  I would not say that this applies to Resident Evil 4. 

It could have been so bad.

Look at Final Fantasy now, the wheels are completely off the fucking franchise.  They don't have any idea what they did to create it, and then they let people who didn't understand it to begin with interpret it poorly.  Their teenaged fumblings have destroyed it. 

I spoke with someone at PAX would would love to have the old Resident Evil return and sees this new mutation as not entirely unpleasant but still unseemly and even perhaps somewhat damp.  I've still got a few REs of the old persuasion in me, if they choose to go that route - but I don't know that they could materially improve on Code Veronica, and I think they're aware of it.  Indeed, I'm alsmost certain they are, having retreating into prequels and "reimaginings" immediately upon its completion. 

The reality is that by five separate interpretations of Alone In The Dark, the evil had become perhaps too resident, a little set in its ways.  They were good ways, I mean, shit.  I liked those ways.  But I don't find the new ways less legitimate, disrespectful, or what have you.  They've simply taken the slider that represents the supplied ammo and turned it up, while at the same time amplifying the number of enemies to a tremendous degree and - this is why it works - emphasizing precision and trick shots.  It is as though the game is in a different key.  There's that music term again:  transposition.

In any case, the game is a Goddamn sight more interactive while it hits those notes we find so delicious about survival horror.  That it is also exquisitely beautiful, proving the claim of a console that never really got respect for its prowess, well, that never hurt none.

(CW)TB out.

chamomile, motherfucker