I recognize that - under ordinary circumstances - Penny Arcade is not your source for comics about man's single-minded enthusiasm for putting one thing into another thing. Putting the lime in the coconut was only the tip of a terrifying iceberg covered in a carpet of unblinking eyes with the wild, animal look of a man who has killed. If you already knew that human beings were doing this kind of thing, by which I mean the spider-goat thing, my hat's off to you. We never heard about this shit until a week ago, which is surprising because when someone squeezes some Goddamn spider silk out of a goat's titty it's the kind of thing one expects to hear about. Industry is clacking its hideous mandibles with excitement over the applications of readily available spider silk, focused largely on the swinging and thwipping sectors of our economy. I'm making goofy jokes about it because I think that we are a young species that often fucks with things we don't know how to unfuck. It's a coping mechanism.

I still haven't purchased Warcraft III, though that isn't to say that I haven't played it a bunch at Monkey's - in fact, our fruitless travails versus the invincible A.I. foe have become a ritual of sorts. Greg thinks it's pretty great, and since everything that he has thought or felt ever is true I'm inclined to agree with him. By comparison, I invest young S. Monkey's opinions on a given subject with the unswerving credulity I might grant a growling raccoon - so when he says that he's iffy about the game, it's like a rodent at a podium trying to lecture on the elasticity of oil prices. In other words, it's not only irrelevant - it's hilarious.

It's worth discussing, though. To take you back - much like Star Control 2 is for me, Warcraft 2 is for him. I'd bet that goes for literally a million other people. It's a game that was not only excellent, but also came to represent some idyllic phase of life, which is better marketing than some fuckhead could ever scratch on a whiteboard. He's as invested in the Orcs as I am in the Chmmr. So when a sequel to that game comes out - and let's be clear, it's a sequel to your life, to some irreplaceable coordinate charted on some personal continuum - there's absolutely no way you can examine the event objectively. Not at first. More often than not, you can't help but feel disappointed. Now, Star Control 3 wasn't a very good game in my opinion, which is a matter quite apart from the phenomenon I'm describing. It had the lizard guy, and he ate the mouse and I really wasn't into it. But it was damned doubly by the fact that it did not successfully recreate my life in Junior High, a feat which would be difficult to accomplish for any developer. I did not find my heart somehow rekindled for Jennifer Hebb, so the entire exercise was a failure. That's hardly Accolade's fault, of course, but there are simply realities about perception that I'm not going to deny. So yeah, at first, Monkey had some misgivings about the game. Maybe he still does. Maybe he'll step up to the plate and talk about it. The thing is, when we get a chance to just play it, we have a fantastic time - apart from the cogitation and so forth that occupies the time we aren't playing it, mulling over this and that in a pantomime of genuine objectivity. It's amusing, but I know that gamers probably are the worst people to ask if this particular product is a worthy successor.

Stack that on top of the fact that I don't even know if I'm playing stuff like this right anymore. Ever since I started reading Zileas dot com, looking at the strategies and thoughts on each patch or whatever, it's like they're not even talking about games. I don't know that I'll ever look at Warcraft in this way, which means that I'll probably never be competitive online - but if you ever need your Bnet ranking padded with some easy victories you know where to find me. Just send a couple ghouls over and I'll probably disconnect.

(CW)TB out.

what you want
baby, i've got it

Kara was AWOL this week, so I enlisted the help of our young Safety Monkey for that Love & Hate thing. I'm working on being a "bad influence" over him.

First it was Tycho making bums dance for dimes they'd never get outside of 2001's E3, and now it's Monkey talking back to everyone. Soon, I'll have Kara pitching Gabe through the air like a lawn dart when he starts quoting that Eminem shit, and maybe even getting Brenna(who is one of those "don't call me 'chick'" chicks) to start making toe-curling sexist comments about scrubbing floors and who's place it really is in the kitchen.

Yes, everything is working out fine. Juuuuuuust fine

New info about the unofficial PA Con thing here.

SPEAKING of Conventions, Sir Tycho has something to say, DON'T YOU?

Oooooooooooh. That con.

Yes, we're going to be at the San Diego ComicCon. We'll be at Kiko's Game-Skins booth probably, selling shirts and maybe some other crap. Why?

(CW)TB

I doubt because it's a really gigantic god damn convention that a shit-ton of people will be at. Maybe it's because you're an idiot?

Shut up, idiot.

You won't hear another word out of me.

(CW)TB

No Sir.

(CW)TB

Gosh, I sure hope I don't... better get everything out now before Batjew sees.

As much as I appreciate Tycho's casual dismissal of the validity of my opinion on this matter, I beg to differ regarding a few things here. Before we get into it, I should point out that he's absolutely right regarding my "history" with Warcraft. Nobody starts out a hardcore gamer, something has to bring them into the fold. My gateway game was Warcraft II. Before WC2, I would like, PLAY games, you know, but I wasn't a PLAYER, man. You would hand me a game and I'd play it, but there's still a line between a guy who plays games and a GAMER. Guys who just play games don't stay up till 3 in the morning with Neverwinter Nights, nor do they write comic strips focused on games, for that matter. I played Warcraft II day-in and day-out until Starcraft arrived, by which time I was so totally burnt out I could scarcely play it. In fact, I'd say Warcraft is responsible for the bond I share with my best friend, whom I used to play competitively with. So do you think I'm going to pay a teeny bit of scrutiny to the sequel of the game that changed my entire life? Yeah... maybe just a bit.

Does that make my opinion on the game more or less valid? Well... truth be told, probably neither. The game is going to rock or not rock totally independent of anything I say or think about it. I can understand why one might say that gamers are the worst sort of person to ask about the validity of X (where X is equal to sequels, in this case)... but who else are you going to ask, if indeed you MUST ask? The trick is asking the right question. If you ask me, or any Warcraft II fanatic for that matter, if Warcraft III is a "worthy successor", I'm going to hem and haw and give you a comparative analysis. If you ask me if Warcraft III is a good game, I'd say "Oh... well, yeah. Duh." In just a second here, I'm going to talk about WC3 for a bit, but you need to understand that just because I'm saying something negative, it doesn't mean I don't enjoy the game. It just means I'm trying to hold it up to impossibly high standards, and I'm not sure yet how well it holds up.

Having said all that... I like WC3, but the jury is still out on how much I like it. The graphics and sound are flawless, as could be expected. The choice between 4 different races is kind of overwhelming, and unlike Starcraft it's not immediately obvious what the differences are going to be in the general racial strategies. I'm sure it's something I'll pick up over time, but it's not immediately leaping out at me. I'm also not convinced yet that the more races is equal to more fun, if you follow me. The focus here is definitely more on micromanaging your units and their special abilities in combat, which is something I'm not used to. I think there's a lot of potential where this is concerned, though, and there are a few things I like to try out but haven't had the time yet. For example, I'd like to try playing a 2v2 where the teammates are sharing control of their units. It seems like there's a lot of potential for a partnership where one player focuses on base management/defense/expansion, and the other focuses on going out and kicking some ass.

Give me a few days with my baby, and I'll come back and write you a very pretty review. In the meantime, go pick it up and figure it out for yourself. If you like RTS in general, you won't be disappointed... that much is certain.

(CW)Safety Monkey

Because Batjew said not to, and I respect that.

(CW)TB