This is just a heads up to let everyone know that the charity poker tournament tonight has been canceled due to the snow. No point driving around tonight if you don't absolutley have to. We'll try and reschedule it for sometime after the holidays.

Looking over Joystiq's final word on the Fall Update, and seeing that clans are still nowhere to be found, it seems as though the Friends of Friends option could be used to gin up a somewhat functional compromise. 

By creating a new Silver Account on your own box named (Let's Say) Team Inferno, and and using this new dummy account's hundred-man friend's list as your clan roster, you can with a single invite get access to a well-groomed list of guys that is essentially tuned for this purpose.  It's not perfect, it's not complete, and without Group Voice Chat it's even less so.  But it's something I could see myself using.

(CW)TB

It's been a couple weeks discussing reviews and reviewers around here, but somewhere along the way I neglected to mention that their job is essentially impossible. The 7-9 scale they toil under is largely the result of an uneasy peace between the business and editorial wings of the venue. No matter what score they give it, high or low, they're reviled equally by the online chorus. Apparently, even when they do it right they're doing it wrong.

Just a sampling of the incredible new garments available at our iOnline e-store:
 

I have a bunch of Child's Play news to share with you and I'll start will an auction item.

Wil Wheaton is going to be attending our charity dinner and auction on December 11th and we're auctioning off two seats at his table.  The winning bidder will get two tickets to the dinner and seats with Wil. The table will also host some Bungie peeps as well as our very own Robert Khoo. so hit this link and start bidding. A star studded dinning experience awaits!

If you'd like to attend the dinner but bidding on tickets isn't your style you can still purchase them right here. As I've mentioned before it really is an incredible night. The live auction is always the most exciting part of the evening. Here's a quick look at some of the items that will be available this year.

-          Harmonix Superpack (Flight and Hotel to Boston for a Harmonix Music Tour w/Dev Team-signed copy of Rockband)

-          Appearance in a PA Strip

-          One of these crazy HP Blackbird Ultra Machines

-          Trip for two to Iceland to visit CCP Games

-          Tour of Bungie Studios

And trust me that's just a tiny fraction of the cool shit we've got lined up. If you're in the area or you can get here by December 11th I highly recommend you try and attend. It's a lot of fun and it's all for Child's Play.

In other CP news the poor sons of bitches over at Desert Bus for Hope have finally been put out of their misery. In the end they played for four days, twelve hours and raised $22,805. Thanks to everyone who supported/tortured these guys.

Finally this isn't about CP but the Escapist has a great article about the PAX Enforcers. Their entire theme for this issue is "conventions" so there's some other PAX related content but the feature on the Enforcers is really nice. There's no way to ever thank them enough for their help. We literally could not do PAX without them. It's nice to see them getting recognized for their service.

-Gabe out

Gabriel has apparently made an enemy, perhaps I should say another one, as he does every few months the site is in operation. The man in question can barely put one word after the other by the time he is done with his bizarre soliloquy, rage at my cohort had swallowed his intellect whole. Now he understands one tenth of what it's like to interact with Michael Fucking Krahulik every day.

Basically, I think of myself as an arms dealer. Like Destro.

The train of benevolence keeps chugging along, trailing behind it cars of good cheer.  Occasionally, a toy will bounce from these heaped cars and land in the grass alongside the track.  And, when this happens, know that blooms and juicy wild fruits burst from the spot. 

We have ticked forward the joy thermometer that we maintain on the official Child's Play site, bringing the total to $330,000 dollars.  That's steady.  I expect a few significant leaps as we enter December, because as a fully peer-to-peer charity event there are considerable donations currently tied up in local nodes which are still growing.  Also, the Child's Play Charity Dinner & Auction - now an annual staple - is not only a fantastic time, but has been a tremendously successful event in years past.  It's less than two weeks away, so if you'd like to attend please let us know.

(CW)TB

Robert suggested we create Facebook accounts, I think in an effort to establish that we were "down" with whatever "new jives" the kids were flexing on the mean streets. I refused. Gabriel buckled, and the bullshit that ensued verified my initial assessment: that maintaining Facebook would quickly constitute another job. Of which I already have several.

I don't want to make a huge deal out of it, but yesterday Penny Arcade turned nine years old. This seems like a good time to thank you all for my totally awesome job. I hope you'll let me do it for another nine years.

Mass Effect is an odd game. I find the overly complex/poorly designed menus really frustrating. Also there's the almost complete lack of a tutorial, frequent loads and an auto save feature I'd describe as punishing. I actually almost gave up on the game all together. I'm glad I didn't though.  I just wrapped up a pretty major mission and I finally feel like I have a pretty good grip on the combat. I'm not 100% sure but I think I actually enjoyed myself. Entering a menu still makes me want to snap my controller in half but I think I can put up with that to get this story. It's a really odd game. It sort of oscillates between being totally amazing and sort of sucking. I'm not sure I've ever seen anything else like it.

In my opinion, the best part of the game is the branching dialogue trees. I find myself slogging through combat sometimes just so I can see the next conversation. If you end up digging these directed cut scenes as much as I do you might enjoy our latest shirt offering.

We've talked about the hacking, and the challenges the game has pulling everything off the disc. They don't really teach you how to play the game, either. At first, because the game often looks and feels like a shooter, it is hard to know if the shooting is tremendously difficult or poorly executed. Once you start building your character and get a handle on the deeper systems, it falls into place.

At the end of November last year, Child's play had raised $260,000 dollars, which is super noble and I think we can all agree that it is a lot.  At any rate, it was a lot.  Now, it's shameful.  Because only two weeks into this month, we're already sitting at just under 200 kilodollars.

Here's my order for this year, and I might have overdone it, but once I saw that total it seemed like the bar was set pretty high.  Behold:

You might have already noticed a new button under the comic strips. the "Buy A Print" feature is something we've been working on for a long long time and it's finally ready to go. So for $9.95 you get a high res 11x17 print of the comic strip on a really nice heavy stock paper. These prints are made directly from my original PSD files so they look awesome. Kiko took some pictures this morning so you could see exactly what you're getting.

Mass Effect is odd in that it is simultaneously an argument for and against the 360. Utilizing their northern devilry, BioWare managed to jam a ridiculous amount of content onto a single platter. They've realized their cinematic ambitions in a way that will deeply alter your expectations, and they've done so in real-time sequences that probably kept the game from ballooning to three or four standard DVDs like other RPGs on the system.