If you aren't too busy, you need to go check out this Day of Defeat: Source feature over at Bit-Tech - grab a few of those movies and savor them. DOD has apparently become a kind of playground for them internally, simulating the operation of the human eye and invoking the power of the cinematic tradition. Hot damn.
Also, the comic is finally up. Sorry about that.
(CW)TB
A couple CP things:
Joel Johnson - the man behind the controversial Wired article on the Elemenstor Saga - is hosting an event in Brooklyn called "FÜNDE RAZOR." After a few reveletory experiences with Guitar Hero by Red Octane/Harmonix, it ocurred to him that he could do an altogether unorthodox charity evening - the dark twin of our own swank affair. Taking place at Barcade, and without a cover charge, raffle tickets for a variety of quote fabulous prizes will be on offer, including a 360. I would imagine the core of the evening will revolve around Big Screen Guitar Hero, which is an experience that may well change your life.
Also: Phil Kahn of Just Saying is putting up an essay for auction, topic of your choosing - check out his offer here.
(CW)TB
The King of Kings does know my heart, sir - my black heart, and the oily blood squeezed through it. As regards holiday "meats" of mysterious origin, he is not wrong.
The news about Strategy First warmed my heart - you might have heard it, too. I hope that delivering their (in some cases) ultraniche product direct instead of wrestling EB Games for shelf "inches" ends up making sense for them. Watching Steam move from The Thing You Get Half-Life 2 From to a more complete content channel has been real relief.
I don't know that I've mentioned it, but I probably think about Sin Episodes - as delivered by Steam - probably every day. People who have endured me over the years have seen me agitate for just this sort of thing. Add to the fact that I think Ritual has this shit, probably been talking internally about where the series would go for years, and add to this the idea that I'm ready, ready sir, to play a game whose cost is not onerous and can be completed in a humane four to six hours.
Valve has their own episodic flavor en route, sadly pushed back, but utilizing the unremittingly potent Half-Life franchise one hopes that they could communicate the value of digital delivery to the leery throng. I'm excited about the manifestations of Steam obviously, in the form of individual products, but the platform itself, with the power to remake the retail software industry, fairly resounds. I want it to have more delicious, exclusive items - the sort of thing you'd install the client for even if you had no interest in Half-Life. I like to imagine Steam spreading thus, from host to host, latching by a series of devious hooks and flooding the chest cavity with its genetic material.
I honestly have no idea where that image came from.
It took longer to do my Child's Play shopping than I expected, because as some of you might have seen there weren't any DS systems available for a while. I've always lamented the fact that we've been instructed to keep stuffed animals off our Wish Lists, but their adorablity index is diminished somewhat by their potential as disease vectors. Clearly, Nintendogs is a loophole if I've ever heard one: fully scratchable, portable pups that pant in a bright, perpetually sterile realm. So, I snatched up a system and an ersatz hound dog to reside thereon.
I feel like I did this one right.
(CW)TB out.
holding his daughter
I’ve got some exciting Child’s Play news to mention. We’ve finally added Alder Hey Children's Hospital in Liverpool for all you UK folks out there. We’ve also got the Riley Children's in Indianapolis which brings our total number of partner hospitals up to 21. The response to this years charity dinner and auction has been nuts, we’ve actually had to expand the venue. Tickets will be on sale through the end of this week if you still haven’t gotten yours yet.
The trailer's alright, definitely pro Angel Guy, but whenever I catch a glimpse of Kelsey Grammer as The Beast it kind of injures things. It's just, like, I know you, man. Indeed, it would appear he is well known.
1up recently "rocked" an article asking whether or not the 360 genuinely represents the HD Era, something I thought only required a guaranteed vertical resolution of 720p. They raise a lot of interesting points, moving through the launch titles like a T-800 might stalk through the dystopian hellscape of a future where machines rule. It's something I'd been meaning to discuss before I got sidetracked by space - There's a new Star Chamber client! - but this does present an opportunity.
Call of Duty 2 doesn't really feel like a port, it feels as though it is very comfortable on the hardware, and I prefer the experience I get playing it on the 360 to even the PC version. Someone mark this day on the calendar. I am currently engaged in a torrid affair with PGR3, photographs of which would certainly preclude my bid for public office - and it's a game their online publication gave a ten out of ten. We don't agree on Kong, but we both allow that there are some victors despite their savage expose.
There are lackluster, insulting offerings - see how many used copies of Gun your EB has for the 360, but it looked like a filthy port of a game I didn't want from the word go. Tiger Woods for the 360 is probably the most dire offender for us here, where in exchange for an increased price you actually lose out on a ton of content that the other, supposedly "lesser" consoles offer. We could fantasize about downloadable content - new courses with an additional charge of course, beyond the already standard "next-gen" tax - but it's not my job to engage in apologetics for these people. Even though it looks like I'm about to.
All this said, if you want to play Golf on the 360, I mean... I wish it were more complex than that. And I do want to. And for good or ill, when I choose to get a game for the 360 rather than some other platform what I'm really quote buying is live connectivity to my friends list. This is something that I think is pretty significant, and it's why virtually every multiplatform title I buy will probably be on this machine. Because Live support is fundamental to the system instead of a perk developers can choose to offer, accessing that content - I guess my friends are content now? Heaven help us. But the entire social substructure persists regardless of what I'm doing with the machine. Nintendo's doing their own thing, they're entirely outside this continuum. But I see no reason to believe Sony has a response to this, at least, no response that doesn't say SquareEnix right there on the front.
(CW)TB out.
the men who have served you so long and so well
Once again you guys have set me straight. Apparently if you unlock everything in Kong there is a different bonus ending. I’m not the sort of person who can play back through a game I’ve all ready completed so the chances of me ever seeing this ending are slim to none. I suppose it’s nice to know it’s there at the very least. I am a little curious as to how else they could possible end it. That’s like sitting through the credits after the Titanic and then seeing an ending where the boat just misses the iceberg.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about the new gamer card feature for the 360. I got this mail in my inbox though and I have to admit I think it’s pretty cool.
I wouldn't expect a lot of this sort of thing. But I have been asked to make an exception, and asked by someone who I am in no position to refuse. So prefaced, behold:
He is an arresting creature, to be sure. As most of his movements are governed by animal reflexes and whatnot, he can't really be blamed for the lion's share of his activities. This being said, anytime a person pees in your mouth it is difficult not to see it as an insult.
(CW)TB
It's true, I've never seen King Kong - so while his revelations were spoilers in the classic sense, it's hard not to argue with his logic. His logic. Gabe's. There are things one never really expects to type.
This isn't the first time I'd observed some tiny scene in a movie and felt like I could extrapolate the film, somehow. King Kong was a movie about a monkey making his crazy way in the big city. I'd never heard of any Skull Island. Hair was also this way. I was with it. They were dancing in the park, it was the Age of Aquariuuuuuuus, I knew about that, and then bam - on the plane to Vietnam. I also thought I had a pretty good fix on the Sound of Music, indeed, the hills were alive with it, but they go right from singing about whiskers on kittens to a bunch of Goddamn Nazis kicking down the door. These are pronounced shocks to a young man such as myself, frail of constitution, given to bouts of tremors and glossalalia even on a pristine summer afternoon. The idea that even The Sound of Goddamn Music played host to a writhing core of evil was simply too much for a mind already taut with those horrors which, if named, would spring as if from the very sounds of their naming unto a sleeping world.
Where was I? Ah yes.
So, if Weird Worlds is like a vacation but in outer space, and Sword of the Stars is like playing Space Captains after school on the Jungle Gym, then I think that I can step forward in this trajectory by saying that Galactic Civilizations 2 is probably something like going to work.
As you may recall, I loved the first GalCiv - so I was only too happy to pre-order the second one and gain access to the beta. That is, until I remembered that I don't really like playing betas anymore. I used to live for them, several installed simultaneously, here we go, but some internal shift ocurred at some point and now I prefer to play finished games. Weird, I know. Oh, and also, the beta for Anarchy Online destroyed my Windows partition, which did sting a bit.
GalCiv2 is, I think it accurate to say, en route to being the definitive star empire simulator. They're rarely made anymore, which I suppose improves the odds. More than that, however, is that Stardock is focused on making a full-fat, no excuses, honking angular Imperial Throne for you to recline in and manage your worlds. I think it's understood that if you want to succeed with this sort of thing, concessions need to be made to the market gods re: mechanical complexity. They are pretty much telling the market gods to go fuck themselves.
(CW)TB
no stumbling pilgrim in the dark
Gabriel and I have always positioned Killer Instinct up there with our favorite fighters, though our tastes in the genre have become so refined I don't know if its simple pleasures would still provide us succor. If you were not a proponent, let me then explain that you could "buffer" a combo so large that you could literally walk away from the machine while it made your grisly design manifest. Tons of fun, and made for the kind of Arcade Rivalry that has by now become shrouded in memory. I presume the modern equivalent is to "get served" whilst a young man whirls on a piece of greasy cardboard.
I don't really know, I heard that was a show they have now.
Moving on though, I genuinely cannot tolerate Perfect Dark Zero. I still hope the thing sells like gangbusters, because it's doing some things that need Goddamn done, Co-Op over live in a full campaign specifically - in this regard it may yet serve my dark purpose. I have played a couple missions in, however, and I am fairly certain that I'm just going to leave the rest on my plate. This is one of the least tactile shooters in history. Coming off of games like F.I.Z.Z.E.A.R., where every shot feels like a real "thing" in the environment - "that's how you know it's working" - I don't really feel anything when I engage these wooden, strangely articulated foes. It may be that the multiplayer is the vector for whatever virulent brain flu makes a person rate it a 9.0 - I couldn't tell you. But the days where I can sit in front of a screen, toiling over a game until it reluctantly gives up its candy center are over.
More space.
Sword of the Stars thinks, as Weird Worlds seems to, that space empire games could stand to be less mechanical and more actual fun. It has the things you crave vis a vis stellar dominion, such as plump tech trees, constructible ships, virgin worlds, and starlanes between them, plus the kind of gregarious, Hollywood space combat we don't usually associate with the sometimes ponderous genre. Kerberos - a new company made up of development veterans, boasting the core of the team that made Homeworld: Cataclysm - have modeled each of the four races so that they actually move around the starmap in fundamentally different ways, which presses firmly my tabletop strategy button. I thought it was a ways out, but I've just been corrected by a member of the team - it's only three months away, with a demo inside of the new year.
(CW)TB out.
the mark will show
Windows Vista will supposedly include Media Center functionality, so on that glorious day we'll be able to taste the purest, most succulent fruits of the 360. Until then, people without dedicated Windows Media Center machines can only stream photos and music, which Brenna would say is "better than a sharp stick in the eye."
Except I've wasted hours trying to get it to work, and my machinations only led to an array of slightly different failure states. Now the PC can see the 360. Now it can't. Now it can, but the 360 can't see it. And so on.
If you're having a similar problem, most people are suggesting that you need to have .NET Framework 1.1 installed, which is probably true but wasn't my issue. They might also tell you to verify that the Universal Plug and Play service is active, or to make sure that the Windows Media Connect service is started, with all of its dependencies in tow. This is also good advice, but it wasn't my problem either.
My problem was Internet Connection Sharing, or ICS. I didn't install it myself, but that is how the Nintendo Wi-Fi USB Connector works its magic - it's essentially a dongle that hooks into a basic Microsoft networking service. I thought I'd mention it, if there was anyone else having the same issue.
(CW)TB
It’s a bummer that our book won’t be out in time for Christmas. I know that lots of you were hoping to pick that up for someone this year. It will be out in January though and to help satisfy you in the meantime Dark Horse has decided to release a 24 page mini comic on December 7th. This is a full color preview of the actual book that you can go pick up at your local comic book shop or buy online. The best part is that it will only cost 25 cents. So you could wrap up the mini comic for someone as a way of saying “Your real gift is the PA book but Gabe and Tycho are fucking idiots so you won’t get it until January.”
I'm not sure we read the entire news story before coming up with today's comic offering, but this wouldn't be the first time we'd played rough with your Earth facts.
One of the reasons I've been so dismissive of your blue-green sphere of late is that I have set my sights upon domination of the cosmos at large. Some of your continents are shapely I suppose. But there are rare minerals such as garbundum, desperately needed for the galactic war machine, that do not naturally occur anywhere on your orb.
Believe me when I say that I could go on like this for hours, but an abiding affection for you has stayed my hand. I don't know if space as a setting was outré for a while, blasted out France taking the fore, or what, but there are quite a few developers taking on classic gaming themes in that revered expanse.
Weird Worlds: Return To Infinite Space is the sequel to an older game from Digital Eel, who also brought us the scrumptious Dr. Blob's Organism and Plasmaworm. Weird Worlds is, and I hope they will not find this summation offensive, a highly streamlined version of the 4x Space Empire type game. The "Action RPG" concept puts stats, advancement, combat, in a wind tunnel and produces a high sucrose version of those concepts. Imagine what would happen if you approached a stodgy old patriarch in the vein of Master of Orion, with the same unsparing eye, and wielding the same dangerous instruments. You'd focus on the thrill of discovering new planets, new worlds, upgrading your ship, only enough trade to maintain the pace, and interstellar combat. Well, that's Weird Worlds. It's also designed so that you can actually wrap up a game of it in a single human lifespan. Of course, these liberties are anathema to the steadfast genre proponent - but delicious, freewheeling fun is something that you don't usually get from that genre.
This paragraph was originally going to chastize them for not having a version of the game available for download, where many people who might want such a thing might pluck it without hesitation. They have done so, so no abuse is necessary. They have made a demo available as well, if you like. I warn you: don't engage in combat of any kind until you have a pimped out ship with whirling space rims and underglow. Unless you have a deep curiosity about what it would be like to burn alive and then die in the cold places between stars.
There are actually tons more space games, but I'll cover them later as I've already inconvenienced readers with my tardiness. I will admit to you that instead of the word "abuse" in the last paragraph, I had initially wanted to use the word harangue, and that I thought for a very long time how I would imply that I might serve them lemon harangue, which didn't really go anywhere.
(CW)TB out.
how much more can i take
I have a quick Child’s Play update for you as well. We just broke the $185,000 Mark. We are on track to completely destroy our old records. We’ve added a bunch of new hospitals to the list as well bring our grand total to 19. Check the CP site for more info about the new hospitals as well as some new sponsors. You guys are really doing an amazing job. Thanks to everyone who has donated or put up a sign in their school or even just told a friend about CP.
Sorry for the late comic strip today. We are still trying to work some of the bugs out of our new backend.