DOA is very much not our series when it comes to fighters.  I play them, because they are beautiful to look at - but the fighting has always felt pretty loose to me in comparison to a Soul Calibur or a Guilty Gear.  All this said, it's a game that gets popped in at social gatherings because it's extremely accessible. 

Frankie did a really great write-up on Spartan-458, the Halo character that ended up in Dead or Alive 4.  There's some information about the way an armored cyborg might fight, etc.  I found it delicious.

(CW)TB

Fans of Epic Legends have put together a few auctions for Child's Play, if you're interested - custom garments which I'm told adhere to every Item Law.

If you are currently naked, this is certainly one way to resolve that.

(CW)TB

I am still recovering from last night’s dinner and auction for Child’s Play. To say that the evening was a huge success would be the understatement of the year. Just to give you an idea of how incredible last night was let me give you some numbers. At the dinner last year we raised just over $17,000 which we thought was a respectable amount. This year we raised $82,100.

Typically Gabe just scowls when stubborn traces of French II surface in a conversation, but yesterday he decided instead to mine la belle langue for his own perverse ends.

Most of us are probably still familiar with the term "Foxed," I imagine - it is the process by which your Aliens mod, done in reverence, a natural outgrowth of your obsessive enthusiasm for a corporation's intellectual property, gets you sent a terse communique on official letterhead.  The old Cease and Desist, as it is called.  No actual foxes are involved.  I know there are still furs who read the site on occasion, and I apologize if I got your hopes up.

Since it is usually my presumption that things will go terribly awry, off the rails so to speak, possibly off a cliff to be submerged in lava, whenever I hear about a fan project - pure of heart, as I said, done only in reverence - I try to avoid mentioning it.  I hate that, but if the powers that be can pinpoint a single S&M Strawberry Shortcake amongst the high-grown wilds of Interspace, I don't want to be the one to instigate a good and proper foxing.  Again, just so there's no confusion -  it's a neologism, jargon:  class, legal.  No foxes.

So it's actually kind of fun to mention King's Quest IX: The Silver Lining, because Vivendi Universal has (in what I find to be a startling manuever) given them the go ahead.

I hope that this "royal seal" draws talent out of hedges and holes that might otherwise have simply observed the process from a safe distance, outside what you might call the effective range of the legal apparatus.  Such a game is like a no-cost expedition into the dark twists of Sierra's sleeping archive.  If it produces a hit, a strike somewhere in that twilight realm, they already own the rights and can make excellent decisions regarding the franchise in the future.  

Halo Zero I saw mentioned over at 1up, a sidecroller like Codename: Gordon but locked into the Halo franchise instead of Walve's own scrumptious continuity.  I don't know if it gets much bigger, in raw brand terms, than Halo - and I haven't heard word one about retaliation of any sort.  It's pretty neat, and I get the impression that H0 is a codification (perhaps?) of Eric Nylund's prequel novel, The Fall of Reach.  It was made in France, which I think lends this post a nice sort of concenptual continuity.

(CW)TB out.

sun so hot i froze to death

Don't forget, Brooklynites:  Tonight is the night of Fünde Razor!

(CW)TB

A lot to cover:

First, our newest comic strip has been made available - with a strip where Gabriel performs help desk functions for his own father, Penny Arcade has become twisted hybrid of the foul PVP Online and the inscrutable Illiad's User Friendly.  It's hard not to believe that this sort of thing doesn't presage our final days.  At long last: the onrushing darkness, the ignominious end!

Second, the finalists in the 2006 Independent Games Festival have been announced.  This almost always means good times, as many of these things have either free demos or are simply free altogether.  You have no doubt already heard of Darwinia, either here on the site or as a part of their recent Steam announcement, but I'd imagine it's the exception.  Strange fighting games where the object is to pile bodies high enough to escape is only one of the new ideas I saw over there.

There is a game called Thomas and The Magic Words that I enjoyed.   Pay close attention to the second bullet point:


YES.  Fuck yes. 

Picture something like Scrabble, something scrabbelian, where the words you lay down become tiny bridges for a young wizard (!!!).  Clearly, this is what the medium has been working toward.  After entering the word Gourmet, I actually began to hyperventilate.

Third, the title of today's strip is from a song off of Pond's album Rock Rollection. 

(CW)TB

the waters close over my head

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