Though I am grieved to admit it, today's strip may mark a fumbling foray into perverse continuity. Brace yourselves.
The very mention of credit has always filled mind with the image of a wildly gesticulating robot. I avoid credit instinctively, like I would one of those steel traps you see in cartoons. Even if there's a steak on there or something, I'm like, "No." I'm one-hundred percent okay with Gabe getting a credit card though, that's his problem. It is a pleasure to see a man physically hunched with debt, as though at some point all that delayed responsibility acquired genuine weight. Also, I get to set up all the cool-ass wireless shit he bought, the setting up being vastly superior to the buying, certainly and (at least for me) even the using.
Like any person of demonstrable virtue, I wait with my colleague Safety von Monkey for the release of Masters of Orion 3. Sense and decorum would dictate that I be reserved in my praise of a game in advance of playing it, but neither of those is ever in supply around here, so let's just say THEY WIN whatever it is they are up for and call it good. It was to be released on the twenty-sixth of this month I believe, then the twenty-eighth, then December the sixth, and now when I look at the E to the B I'm pulling the seventeenth? I don't care when it comes out, I mean, it already won my imaginary award.
It's perfectly fine for them to delay actually, and continue doing so, until I've completed Hegemonia. In fact, I've been sort of worried that Hegemonia would come and go and no-one would really notice it, particularly in the face of 2002 Imaginary Award Winner, Masters of Orion 3. It might be hard to tell, and I don't really know how Hegemonia has been presented to the gaming public, but it is essentially a combination of a galactic empire sim and an RTS. Genre hybrids in and of themselves are no reason to sit up in your seat and take notice, but this game has something special about it that I could expound on for a good deal longer that you would care to read. For one thing, and let's get this out of the way, it has full co-op in the main campaign - for which it scores in excess of one jillion points. It is also one of the most beautiful games ever produced on the PC, which one might expect from an RTS but never from a galactic sim. The ship designs are attractive, but they're also functional in this odd way that is difficult to characterize - aesthetics are there, but they look like they actually serve their stated purpose. I just appreciate that. As for the game itself, you colonize planets in multiple galaxies and then bend their every waking moment to producing your terrible machines of war. This is all underpinned by a space opera storyline that moves through multiple episodes and missions - thankfully, as in Homeworld, you maintain units and technology as the game progresses. The interface is a little esoteric in spots, and the voice acting and dialogue are sort of strange from time to time - but neither of those are dealbreakers. Final score? Lettuce.
This happens all the time. When I hear about a big patch coming out for a game, I don't know if I'm alone in this, but I usually stop playing it altogether. There have been other examples, but let's go with the most recent: Battlefield 1942. I am, was, whichever, completely nuts about this game. I've said on multiple occasions that I believe it the successor to Tribes, etcetera, and so on, tally pip God save the Queen. There's just some outstanding issues with it that always bugged me and slowly eroded my support, so when a patch was announced that would improve framerate and clear up the very spotty hit detection in some cases I saw no reason to play it anymore in its current state. Well, apparently the long-announced patch is forthcoming, and now that it is, there's other games to play or I've simply moved on. This is the other thing that happens all the time.
I'm going to Goddamn, Filthy Spokane from now until Sunday, it shouldn't really change the schedule here but Friday's post might be a bit light on account of the many, many games of Mexican Train Dominoes one is expected to play in family situations. I don't know why that game is so fun, you're basically just putting one number by the other.
(CW)TB out.
i'm searching the city for sci-fi wasabi
