After dabbling in a bit of Freedom Force - which I would follow up later with rather a lot of Freedom Force - we wanted to do something along these lines. The game has these great backstories for each character, like proper comics should - you can check out the one for the melancholy "Man-Bot" on the official FF downloads page. When I've played more of it, I'll have more to tell you - but at the moment, I'm completely infatuated with it. And hey, the EB website was wrong - the Bonus CD I got for pre-ordering came with three new models, not just skins. Max Sneddon (from Irrational Games Australia) intimated that new meshes and skins may be available soon, which is cause for celebration. I think of the models I have currently as a palette for inventing new personalities, so anything that broadens that gradient is welcome indeed.

Talking to Scott earlier today (we were exchanging Freedom Force tips, if you must know), he said he'd be doing a few comics on the game as well, so you may want to give PvP a looksee this week if it isn't already in your schedule.

Got a few mails from people about Gabe's Gunvalkyrie comment in the last comic, taking that to be The Official Position of Penny Arcade or telling me I suck at videogames for thinking it difficult. As for the accusations of sucking, I can dig it. Gunvalkyrie is the kind of game that makes you say brash things about your abilities, because being good at it actually means something. As regards the supposed Official Position of Something or Other, it's just not true. I love GV. I can pull off shit in that game that would fuck your brain. I suppose a comic where I say "Gunvalkyrie is a good game, but it's an acquired taste" and then Gabe says "So is Poop" (or something to that effect) might have better captured our relative positions, but for my bit I wanted to write about the game directly instead of writing dialogue about the game. That's my prerogative. Watch out, I might do it again.

You know the drill. The following items can be found on the Internet.

Color Consoles: Apparently, a favorable review from IGN has given them more work than they could ever hope to accomplish - so I place this link here for future reference. They install region switches, stylish new LED's, or apply any one of a hojillion colors to your system. It's pretty neat. By themselves, those services may not have garnered them the link - particularly when they seem to be closed, for the moment. When I read that they would be installing Portable Monopoly's Afterburner product, I was like, yeah. This needs to go up.

Lik-Sang: Hell, these guys can do you one better. For a hundred and ten bucks, you can guy a GBA with the Afterburner already installed. A word of warning: Don't go to this site right after you get paid. They will take you for every cent as surely as they had mugged you in the street. Along with absolutely everything you have ever wanted in your whole life, they also have the GP32. Yes, that's right. The handheld gaming system they give you in heaven.

The Parlor: The Parlor is bad-ass. It is also a short film. Those of you who have already seen it, I don't care. Those of you who haven't seen it yet, you're in for a treat. They say bad words and talk about bad things and some of the people are from Spokane. Rub some dirt on it and watch the Goddamn movie.

Jjukil's Open Letter To Enix: If you were looking forward to the release of Dragon Warrior IV Remix for the PS, but now you're mad because they aren't going to put it out anymore, maybe you'll know what he's talking about.

At the recent Game Developers Conference, Penny Arcade reader Chris Port was able to secure the following - from Warren Spector and to yours truly:

Who does he love, again? I'll give you a hint: It's me.

(CW)TB out.

you don't own the situation, honey

So, today's comic strip is a big one I know. See I thought it would be cool to color the comic strip to make it look like and old comic book. Once I get one of these bright ideas in my head there is no getting it out. I spent the better part of the day trying to figure out how to do it. Now that I think back there is probably some built in "old comic book" filter if I had just looked in the fucking manual. Anyway, I devised a system of layers, selections and channels that seemed to do the trick. Take a look at this image and you will see what I mean. Needless to say I was feeling pretty fucking smart at that point and I continued to create the panels for the strip using my special technique. Then as I began to assemble the panels together into the page I noticed that I was going to have to shrink them down quite a bit. Once I had shrunk it and saved it out I realized that all my hours of work creating those tiny dots was now lost to the Gods of 256 color optimization. I still think it looks okay, just not like what I had originally intended. I'll always have this image though to look back on and remember what could have been.

The official Metal Slug 4 website has a new video up showing off some actual Gameplay. The video shows off some really cool new stuff. Just the first part where they are sliding down a snow covered mountain on a huge log while shooting guys and helicopters is enough to win me over. What they need to do is take the Metal Slug license and make a game for one of the Next Gen systems. I know the word on the street is that their next game Metal Slug 5 will do just that but I am worried they are gonna fuck it up. Will they feel the need to make it fully 3D? Is it gonna turn into some kind of 3rd person action adventure game? God only knows what could happen to it. I can see it working in 3D if it were done like say Klonoa 2 or the old game Pandemonium on the PSX. Essentially give it 3D backgrounds but keep the gameplay 2D. The best option of course would be to keep it a 2D game and just make it high res but the chances of that happening seem slim.

I had some people ask for more information about my Kumite record in Virtua Fighter 4. So here is the breakdown:

Ring Name-Sweet Potato Pai
Rank-1st Dan
Wins/losses-50/31
Win Ratio-61%

I also had a lot of people write in and tell me that they too are getting their asses kicked at the 1st Dan level. It seems like they crank the difficulty way up. If someone ever comes over to my house and brings a 7th Dan VF4 character to play, I'd change my name and move to Mexico.

I have gotten a lot of positive feedback from Club PA members regarding part one of our behind the scenes look at Penny Arcade. There is still plenty of time to join this month if that sounds like something you would be interested in.

We are going to try a new feature here at the Arcade. LOVE & HATE : with Kara and Jew! is an answer column written by, you guessed it Kara and Batjew. They need your questions to get this thing started though. So please feel free to share your most embarrassing problems with them so that later we can all have a good laugh at your expense. Kara, being the kind nurturing person that she is will endeavor to provide you with actual real world solutions to your questions. Batjew being the sick bastard that he is will probably… honestly I have no clue what Jew is gonna do and it kinda scares me.

-Gabe out