I was in the beta for Battlefield 1942, back in what must have been 2002. The key to open your parachute was bound to 9 for some reason, which I thought was kinda funny. I was a dedicated fan of the franchise for years, and when we left Desert Combat for Battlefield 2 I think that when I was at my most ardent - ready squads, and novel chain of command concepts really made us feel like part of a whole.

I like Fallout a lot, and I have for a long time; I also have a pretty robust history of bouncing hard off the genre I conceptualize as "Steam Survival Darlings." It's pretty clear that this isn't meant to be "the next fallout game" in anything but the most literal sense, i.e. it's not Fallout 5, no matter how hard you might want that to be the case. You will be incredibly unhappy trying to map that desire over Fallout 76 - so unhappy, in fact, that it might just not be for you.

I got an iPad Pro back in April of this year after learning that there was an iOS version of Clip Studio. Since this is the program I do all my work in these days, I was curious if an iPad could function as my travel device. After drawing on it for about a week I loved it. I didn’t just decide to use it when I travel. I started using the iPad exclusively for all my drawing.

In truth, it's Gabriel the Younger who plays more Fortnite than Elliot - but Gabriel Prime would never have deployed this kind of poetry, so it was vital that I take the fore.

Gwob was talking about Adventure Mode before, and how savory it is, and how it's mostly new to us because a substantial amount of our Diablo 3 play was back when it still had a cash store. I have a real challenge with games of the "loot-'em-up" variety, and it's whenever I get to "the desert level." It has an almost total ability to sunder my momentum, even for a game I'm nuts about. Whenever they make me start trudgin' through some kinda Goddamn dunes or some shit I'm audi. I'm not proud of it or something, this is just what happens. I think it might be genetic.

I’ve dipped my toe into Diablo III many times over the years. I am not much of a PC gamer but when it hit consoles I put a decent amount of time into it. I just picked it up again on the Switch and tried playing a seasonal character in adventure mode which is something I’d never tried before. In past versions of the game you had to beat the entire story to unlock adventure Mode, but the Switch version allows you to jump right into it. I’ve probably started the Diablo III campaign a hundred times, but never gotten all the way to the end. I like the game on the Switch but honestly wasn’t looking forward to grinding through all the same quests I’ve already seen a million times. Enter adventure Mode!

I don't know if it kept me up all night or anything, but I did spend some time, maybe a… day, considering some fairly heady - and footy - topics. I feel like the next step is to ask my friends who are furs. Indeed, I shoulda fuckin' started there. Call it a hunch, but my guess is that this is a question their people have already answered a million years ago.

Tycho and I are doing an AMA over on r/Boardgames. Come ask us about 20 years of Penny Arcade, PAX, Thornwatch, Child's Play or just say hi.

Gabe and Kara "Carry" Krahulik checked out some World of Warcraft Classic, and found more or less what you would expect, except for whatever you might have forgotten about it. One of the more fascinating things about WoW to me has always been the fact that its UI mods, virtually from the start, flirted with game design - and many, ultimately, became canonized. Some were excommunicated, as I recall. It was just a lot of power to extend the user in a space that was, ultimately, about dripping them back their own time.

Seeing as we’ve done three comics in a row about RDR2, it should come as no surprise that I am hooked on this game. Kara is playing it as well and while she is banging out story missions I can’t stop hunting and fishing.

I think a lot of people must have this problem, at least, I hope they do, because it will make me stand out less: I have a tendency to to get infected by accents. It's not something I'm trying to do, I don't think it's, like… funny or something, I just have to do it. I just got back from PAX Aus, what I would describe as "the best PAX Aus of all time," and after a few days there it's almost impossible for me not to stretch a long O out way, way, too far. Criminally far. Like "if you could lace an O on the rods of a taffy puller" sort of vowell extension. It's decadent, in its way.

It's pretty rare that Gabe and I can just, like… sit down and play games. It's "the cobbler's son," right? But because I'm trying to be humane to myself after the Aus flight I ended up over at his place yesterday afternoon playing Red Dead, which is ridiculous. It's just a ridiculous game. I think they've internalized some troubling ideas about equine health. He asked me if I was gonna grab it when I got home, but I don't know yet. Maybe for the multi. Right now I'm doing something else.

Many people asked after Gabriel down in Aus, but I had more or less the same answer for all of them. Gabriel endeavored to snare the feeling in a lasso of words, but the distillation is that anxiety - the same all encompassing anxiety we have often had the need to discuss - becomes an insurmountable wall. Except a wall is high. Let's say that it becomes an inescapable pit.

I'm in line at the airport, and I'm either on my way through security or being digested by a wholly new form of life. Speaking of which...

Our epic adventure comes to a close in this, the third and fInal comic of the potent Australiana series. Indeed, the only scuff on its gleaming surface is the fact that he's got Double Coat Tim Tams in the strip and not the caramel kind. Double Coat is strictly for deviants - this is well understood. So… maybe it's the right one for the strip after all.