Penny Arcade

Continuity Schmontinuity, that’s my motto - we’re switching it up.  What are we doing these days to dull the horror of sentience?  I’ll tell you this much: there’s a very special game we aren’t playing.  As I’m sure you can imagine, Gabe doesn’t play it more than I do.

I always knew that the fundamentals of Planetside were good, but until last weekend I’d never seen it all come together - hackers supported by MAXes, delivered via Galaxy transport to areas already softened by friendly armor.  Player-directed objectives on an unprecedented scale.  The simple joy of piloting an Advanced Nanite Transport to resupply captured installations.  And the recently added Lattice - which allows you to capture bases only when they are connected to a friendly installation - means that rather than a couple guys running around nabbing undefended bases, there are active fronts that span whole continents, each side visibly making gains and taking losses on the dynamic map.  It is a comforting thing to know that a game you have had faith in from the first shaped up so well - indeed, I have but two concerns. 

One or two humans asked me recently if we were going to Otakon.  Yes, that is true.  I’m rather looking forward to the way the initial shock wears off, leaving your whirling mind in a state capable of speaking normally to a person dressed as some sort of samurai bird.  Also, I’ve realized that a good deal of the discomfort at the last con was because I felt separate from the proceedings in some basic way, so I am commissioning Brenna to make me something to cosplay in.  Everything is so ridiculous as it is, me as Pikachu or something won’t even register.  This convention in particular is really bulking up its Webcomic quotient - with Megatokyo, MacHall, and Mr. Madsen from Little Gamers, I think the turnout for those cats is going to be nuts.

When talking about media hub software for consoles yesterday, I mentioned Qcast Tuner for the Playstation 2.  A very robust featureset on paper, many, many readers have written in, and strangely, they all used precisely the same terminology to describe it:  “Not Ready For Prime Time.”  It does have an inbuilt facility to update itself, but these upgrades happen only once each geological age.

(CW)TB out.

alone in the dark, and that’s not all

Most of you have probably already seen it, but this message is for those who - like myself - had held off for whatever reason.  Please watch the fourth installment of the Animatrix.  I found it horrifying.

(CW)TB

It’s been radio silence on Headfirst’s Dark Corners of The Earth for what seems like strange aeons.  I can happily announce what I know to be true - that Bethesda is planning to publish it, it’s not dead, and it’s in good hands.  I can’t tell you what a relief this is.

(CW)TB

I have a ready response to people who say that Spokane, Washington has contributed nothing to humanity at large.  Perhaps you’ve heard of “misery?”  You know, the sort of unrelenting torment whose intensity approaches literary proportions.  I have it on good authority that it was invented in Spokane, whose major export is human beings, fleeing that Godforsaken landfill of a town.

It is also the home of Cyan, makers of adventure gaming landmark Myst.  I don’t recall if it is good or proper for the hardcore to like Myst or not, all I remember is feeling a terrible wave of jealousy when I saw it on the Macintosh in Journalism class.  That being said, I am quite understandably enthusiastic about Uru:  Ages Beyond Myst, for two reasons.  One, the idea of exploring a multiplayer world filled with puzzles is just mindbending to me.  Two, it’s nice to have a game you can refer to whose primary game mechanic isn’t shoving a shotgun up someone’s asshole. 

(CW)TB

I just got home with RTCW for the Xbox and I played it for about an hour or so. I played a lot of RTCW on the PC so I wasn’t sure if it would still be fun. God was it ever. I jumped online and the first thing I noticed is how much faster the game is. I don’t just mean like the frame rate is faster or you run faster, both of which are true I mean the gameplay is much faster. It seems to me like the bar that allows you to perform class specific special abilities builds up much faster than it did on the PC. Lots more air strikes but also lots more health and ammo being dished out.

I experienced no lag at all on a server with 16 players on it. It almost felt like I was playing system link the connection felt so good. The voice chat was awesome as well. You can set your “radio” to a couple different frequencies that will allow you to communicate with your entire team or just specific squads. Oh, and when someone talks a little icon appears above there head. Brilliant. So when someone yells that they need ammo I get a visual clue as to who I need to dish out the goods to.

I haven’t even checked out the new multiplayer levels or the new single player stuff. I’m excited to give the Co-op a try tomorrow with Tycho. If you never played the PC version you gotta get RTCW, it will knock you out. If you did play the PC version it seems to me like there is enough here to make it fresh.

Oh and I forgot to mention that I saw Better Luck Tomorrow last week and it was awesome. I would not be surprised if you haven’t heard of this movie as they don’t seem to be pushing it very hard. Do yourself a favor though and go check it out.

-Gabe out

VideoGame Depot sent out a copy of Capcom’s P.N.03, and Safety Monkey was ready.  His impressions have been made available.

(CW)TB

Jacob just told me about the Planetside Subscription Cards, they have these for Everquest as well - if you don’t have a credit card for them to take their monthly fees off of, you can just grab one of these cards at EB and do it that way.  In any case, the list price for these cards is forty bucks - same as the EQ cards, which would lead a reasonable person to believe that the fee was for one was commensurate with the fee for the other.  That is to say, $12.95.

You can apparently just grab the game from FilePlanet now, you don’t need to be a subscriber or anything.  Give it a shot with some friends and tell me that doesn’t have the potential to be a great game.  Then try to imagine paying thirteen dollars a month for it.  Your mind will reel, you may want to be sitting down as you contemplate that disparity. 

(CW)TB

We play Raven Shield every night. There’s usually three or four of us going up against the computer in co-op mode. When you are the last person left alive you are essentially incapable of completing the mission on your own so we came up with a new game for that last person to play before they die. It’s called Gunz Blazn’ mode. We all actually carry a secondary weapon designed especially for this mode. You switch your Uzi over to auto fire, you hold down shift and you run through the level with the trigger held down. This is Gunz Blazn’ mode. Now if you are able to actually kill a decent number of terrorists this way you are said to have gone out in a blaze of glory. It is very poor form to be the last man left on the team and then get killed without firing a shot or by blowing yourself up with a frag. If this happens, you are said to have pulled a Tycho. I don’t believe this term requires much explanation.

-Gabe out