Still playing as the doctor in TF2, which is to say that I'm still healing whenever the situation doesn't call for a burst from my fully automatic syringe gun. It's my job to bump that Heavy Weapons Guy from merely unstoppable up to "demonic," or make that Pyro invincible long enough to turn the enclosed space your team is defending into a hellish kiln. And, should my protege go down, I can usually pop back to base in time to find some other blunt instrument. The class is bad news, even minus the chaingun. I can't bring myself to play as anything else.

The news that Mass Effect would feature an uncompromising, high-res simulation of alien lesbian sex was sweet, and hot, like spun sugar. For Gabriel, at any rate. Some of the community reaction is dedicated to demanding gay parity for the male persuasion of this sexual equation, lengthy treatises by oiled men who crave starborne sodomy. The rest of the dialogue is just boring. Boring, terrestrial, and (quite frankly) myopic.

You might want to see this, or you might not: I know that Gabriel has sworn off all exposure to the game, which may also be your policy. Even so, this is the first time they've shown the distaff side of the character creator, so maybe you'll rescind your earlier mandate. A video with a similar theme popped up over at 1up as well, and it does things a little differently: I don't like its look at the character creator as well, but the cut they have of the intro is far superior. If you watched the other one, you're in for a penny, in for a pound: you should check it out.

Having played collectible card games since the original printing of Magic - taking my dishwasher's tips across the street to Dragon Tails to secure boosters for the coveted Arabian Nights - seeing Gabriel take up the pastime has warmed (but not thawed) my black heart. It's always a portion of myself I've bridled in his presence, kept hidden, suppressed may be the word. To have him take it up so freely makes me wonder which perversion of mine he'll take up next.

Many of you are probably already familiar with Gamer Dad. He's become
a fixture at PAX and we've linked to him on a number of occasions. If
you don't know about him you should check out his blog. He's out there
fighting the jack Thompsons of the world and trying to prove that
being a gamer doesn't mean you're a psychopath. He has also been
tirelessly preaching the importance of gaming with your children.
basically he's one of the good guys and right now he needs some help.

I purchased twenty fluid ounces of Halo 3 "Limited Edition Mountain Dew Game Fuel" in the hopes that it would taste so horrible that we'd get a strip out of it.  Before I read the ingredients in preparation for this post, I often found myself desirous of this strange liquid - a liquid the precise color of tubercular sputum. I would trip over to Seven Eleven to obtain it, tipping a small portion onto the concrete for the Spartans we lost at Reach. Once I discovered that the soda contained a compound called "Brominated Vegetable Oil," my ardor was diminished for some reason. The flavor of the beverage is not unpleasant, especially if you like bromide. The almost oppressive campaign that surrounds the product is, perhaps, more bitter.

Heavenly Sword is, as you will soon discover, the very definition of a rental title. Clocking in at somewhere between five and six hours (depending on your appetite for overwrought cinemas) it's a decent game saddled by impossible expectations. It has silly ideas and grandeur in close proximity to one another.

I've gotten some mail about the Sony Defense Force site we mentioned in the strip today. Most people seem to want to know if it's a joke or not. I am of the opinion that it is. I'm not sure about Tycho but I think it's 100% fake. Stuff like the Lair review and their spin on the video of Halo 3 running on a PS3 demo station just can't be real. I think the guy running the site and making the articles is a genius. He's pulling in all kinds of traffic with an incredible parody and best of all, he even has people in his forums who think the whole thing is real. My guess is, in a couple weeks or maybe a month he'll drop the charade and reveal the whole thing was a gag. Maybe he can keep it going longer than that but I doubt it. I hope he can though because honestly it's fucking hilarious.

Going deeper into the Console War than ever before we discovered hidden camps, and were inexorably drawn to their strange rhythms and makeshift jungle podiums hot with rhetoric. It grieves me to announce that we may have lost Gabriel to their potent lure.

To fully communicate Lair, you really to need a video component - and the review over at Gametrailers really sets things straight. The abrupt storytelling, technical stumbles, and strange behavior are all much better delivered by the game itself than by my hyperbole.

Sony hasn't been entirely clear regarding what their 1.92 update for the Playstation 3 actually does, suggesting that it "focuses on some PS3 compatibility and playability issues for select titles," but our own experience with the update has been conclusive. In the Internet's dark places, aggrieved Lair fans are suggesting that this update improves the game's motion controls, and that each media outlet must rescind their previous scores. I'm fairly certain this is magical thinking - neither Sony or Factor 5 will say with any specificity, and now that both our PS3s are updated it would be impossible to test.

Welcome to the show notes for Downloadable Content 09/05/2007, "Getting Down." The episode is available for direct download at this link, or feel free to subscribe to our iTunes compatible feed here. There is no guide for this one, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the mountains of madness.

One of the questions during a a panel at PAX had to do with the italicised line at the end of each day's post. They're almost always song lyrics, and back before we were paying for bandwidth (and before RIAA rape gangs were prowling the web) these lines used to link directly to the MP3. I maintained the practice afterward because it's sort of like a song of the day, and I like the idea that someone might be struck by a strange turn of phrase and seek out a piece of music. It also serves as a gauge of my mental state at the moment. Today's song, for example, is Stan Rodgers' incredible live version of the sea shanty "Rolling Down To Old Maui," which Pandora kicked out after about a week of tuning the station. I've listened to it about thirty times today.