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Tycho

I am completely astonished by the stupid crap I’ve had to tolerate regarding this Ghost thing.  As often as not, it’s a clumsy segue into some screed about consoles or PCs which I’m sure sounded very smart when you wrote it.  It is the sterling, unerring quality of this discourse that has inspired today’s comic, in fact.  I have neither the time nor the energy to disabuse you these notions, which have apparently dismantled the whole of your mental apparatus.  If you’ve been avoiding consoles because you see them as childish, while you yourself are a man of erudition who only deigns to use a machine befitting your elevated intellect, there is no way for me to describe to you how far off-base you are.  You can’t even see the base from there.  You’re looking around, but you can’t find it.  Where’s the base?

No online play on consoles?  No innovation?  Those aren’t simply false, they’re criminally negligent.  They do not even resemble reality.  Don’t send us anymore hatemail about this garbage, as it has the opposite of your intended effect.  It is a sweet odour to us, like an offering.  We forward them to each other and laugh at you, we trade your worst moments in joy and exultation.  So, keep shaking that tiny fist!  From here, it looks like a puppet show.

Now, to the business at hand.  Dynasty Tactics is a triumph!

I don’t want to come on too strong here, but if you can’t afford this game, you need to go sell some blood, pussy.  I wouldn’t worry too much about the price, actually, as this is a game that will end up in the used bin as often as not.  It’s not for everybody, even tactics fans that think it might be for them.  You don’t spend a lot of time on the world map, and neither did they, so I won’t spend a lot of time going into that either.  Were you ever into Puyo Puyo, Puyo Pop, or Mean Bean Machine?  Puzzle Fighter, too.  They’re puzzle games that rely on chaining solutions together for greater effect.  It struck me after I had played the game for a few hours that I was playing not a strategy game at all, but a sort of puzzle game all gussied up.  I believe this is an apt way of putting it.  Like those pocket sliding puzzles, it is your duty in Dynasty Tactics to promote harmony.  Of course, harmonious arrangement of troops - a sort of malevolent feng shui - commits dissonance on a grand scale to your opposition.  If your men are arranged in accordance with their nature, they will goad, feint, charge, and trap foes in ever escalating crescendos of casualty.  I need to shut up before I get all Sun Tzu.  I just wanted to put in my vote for GAME OF THE CENTURY.   

Natural Selection.  The most ambitious mod ever actually completed will be out very soon, indeed, it is imminent, and it is the only reason Half-Life is still installed on this box.   

I have been derelict in my duties, and as such did not introduce the people keeping the lights on this month.  Iron Storm you’ve probably heard of.  It’s a first-person shooter set as though the first World War never ended, which - as I am sure you can imagine - is a highly unpleasant state of affairs.  There’s a demo you’re free to check out, if bleak war-without-end sounds like your cup of tea.  ClanBOB, well…  It’s ClanBOB.  They say it better than I probably could.  I’m highly gratified that a smallish publisher and a webcomic thought we, and therefore you, would be a good investment.  If you have a moment, would you please check them out?  I appreciate it. 

(CW)TB out.

it wasn’t I hit him, ‘twas johnny jump up

Gabe

With all this Ghost hub bub I totally forgot to talk about Starfox. I have had it for about a week now and it’s a hell of a good game. This really isn’t a Starfox game though. It’s a platform/adventure style game that just happens to have Fox, and a few precious minutes of Arwing action here and there. It’s easily one of the best looking games on any console. The water effects rival those in Mario Sunshine and the characters look totally awesome. I honestly was sort of disappointed in the combat before this evening but that’s because I didn’t actually understand how it worked. I realized there must be more to it and so I sat down tonight and actually read the manual. It turns out the combat is actually really fucking cool. I’m pulling off wicked combos now and bad ass special moves. Rare has always seemed to have a hard on for making players collect shit. Starfox takes this concept to new levels by giving you approximately three hojillion different items to collect. I’m looking for spirits, fruit, scarabs, fuel cells, gems of various colors, little fucking animals that let me continue, spellstones, different kinds of seeds, mushrooms, nuts and roots. the list is fucking endless. I am beginning to think that my love of platform games goes beyond a simple affection for the genre. While I don’t feel the need to wash my hands every five minutes I do think that just a touch of OCD is required to really love these games the way I do. I simply must find every fuel cell. I have to know what happens if I give the mammoth the golden root. Tycho once asked me if I think something bad will happen if I don’t collect all the things. I told him I don’t think I would die, but why take that chance.

-Gabe out