Though it's tangential to this particular strip, you can be certain that Ikaruga deserves every kindness we invest in it. It is glorious, and the most reverent requiem a Dreamcast enthusiast could hope for. I was originally unsure about the fact that the game foregoes the weapon upgrades most consider intrinsic to the genre, but the fact of the matter is that one simply does not have time to fuck around with that sort of crap. It will be quite difficult enough to manage your polarity through thick waves of enemy fire, without also flitting about for weapon upgrades. Also, and I was not aware of this initially, you actually absorb shots of your own color, ultimately unleashing them in a swarm of deadly homing lasons. This makes veritably every enemy shot a potential power-up, so, shooter enthusiasts: rejoice! I neglected to mention that the game features cooperative play, and you can only imagine my exultation. It's actually more of a pain then it's worth in some cases, but it's still much better than going to the dentist. The ships can bump into each other, and having two players makes it nearly impossible to rack up proper combos using Ikaruga's freaky combo system, but what are you gonna do. The game is also hard as hell, even on the easiest mode, which is the way it should be. We've theorized what the hardest mode must be like, and we think maybe you just get cancer and die.

I think Ikaruga is Japanese for "Mind Fuck". For those of you unfamiliar with the concept behind the game I will cover it briefly for you here. Ikaruga is a top down shooter in which all the enemies you will fight are divided into two groups, black or white. Your ship also has two sides to it, black and white and you can flip between these sides at anytime. When your ship is black you can absorb black shots which charge your mega shot meter, you deal more damage against white enemies and white shots will fuck your shit up. The same is true for your ship when it is in white mode only backwards. Get it? Good. The screen is almost always full of enemy fire of both colors and only through skillful use of your own ships alignment will you be able to navigate through them safely. There is also a pretty cool combo system. Destroy 3 enemies of the same color in rapid succession and that kicks off a combo. Continue destroying groups of three enemies of the same color to keep your combo going. You can chain together pretty large combos in this manner and rack up some serious points. While Ikaruga doesn't have multiple weapon upgrades its innovative use of this black and white system more than makes up for it. The level of strategy required to pass some of these levels is light-years beyond your average shooter.

Because I love you so desperately, I have scanned a bit of the Dynasty Tactics manual for you reading pleasure. Now, understand that this is one column of four printed in the manual, and this isn't even all of them. These diagrams should make the case for this game with more eloquence than I could manage myself.

I love Kristopher Straub, I really do. Long after I thought parodies of Apple's Switch Ads might have worn out their welcome, he goes and makes the best one.

I mean, what the damnity damn hell!

This is not the site to go to if you want to be sad all day.

I'd like to thank everyone who set me straight on this - I've learned something today. Just because someone has kind of a frenchy accent does not automatically make them French. Or Canadian. As it turns out, they might also be from Belgium, or some other country where they talk like that.

That we scared away the Xbox owners.

In this third and final chapter, Henry Jenkins leads a rag-tag band of medevial craftsmen against the the cruel Lord Jambon, who has yoked humanity with an insidious new kind of yoke. Don't miss the second chapter, where Captain Jenkins travels to a smoky, complex future ruled by the despotic Ham Kings, or the gripping first chapter, which literally grips you because it's printed on a large clamp.

After playing the game - something I do not recommend you do - we started picturing Blade on a blind date. I can't say that it is logically connected to our thoughts on the title itself. However, we do recommend that you hear Blade's voice in your mind as you read it. Thank you.

By conservative estimates, about half of the readership has completed our survey - so I'm satisfied that our sample is pretty good. Then again, I thought that we had a pretty good snapshot on Wednesday, too, and since then we've added three percent more girls. Now, I don't know a whole lot about girls. Maybe they only surf the web on Thursdays and Fridays. Just in case, I'm going to leave it up for another day.

The Lawyer of Doom transcribed the first half of his interview with Henry Jenkins, Director of Comparative Media Studies at MIT. What does a person like that do? Well, more and more, he represents us, our passtime, and our interests to national media outlets. Give him a listen.

It'll be running until Friday, and I just want to give it top billing: Even now, our magical survey craves your input. People have asked why I haven't posted the results, or if I'm going to - I have every intention of doing so. It's pretty interesting. I'm going to wait until we have all the data to show it off.

Can be found here - if you have a moment, we would really appreciate your input.

I saw that the German Version of the Project Nomads demo was out. I've been watching this game's development ever since it won all those awards for being super duper magooper, so obviously this was big news. However, since I'm not German, I just changed the Deu to Eng and it seems to work just fine.