Penny Arcade

I’d heard the rumor about there being no hard disk in the new Xbox, I’ve heard the rumor after that where it is suggested that you will store your content on a separate, Microsoft created “iPod killer” portable drive as well.  Until Wednesday, I hadn’t heard that Microsoft was planning fully three machines.  Actually, we’ve heard that there are no less than three and a perhaps as many as six new versions of the Xbox hardware - this information is, of course, from our Truth Department.  It needn’t be said that this department abhors lies and strives in all things towards greater accuracy.

It must be said:  I also suggested “Xbox Rancheros” for today’s comic, which is distinguished from the other models by a tangy southwest sauce and shredded Monterey Jack.  It was right before lunch and I was hungry as fuck.  Cooler heads prevailed. 

You’ve probably heard there was a store selling Half-Life 2 on Thursday, though I believe this behavior has since been curbed.  It couldn’t actually be played is the thing - it checks in with Valve over the various Internets to authorize itself, and they simply aren’t allowing that yet.  That doesn’t keep me from opening up Steam every now and again to see if Half-Life 2 has moved from the “Coming Soon” heading to “My Games,” as I’d heard that a broken street date might mean an early release on Steam.  That hasn’t happened yet, and I’m sad to say I don’t really hold out much hope for it.  If early copies are essentially just round pieces of plastic (as opposed to useful software), and if Valve is in complete control of whether or not the program can execute to begin with, it doesn’t seem like any of us will be reprising our roles as Gordon Freeman thanks to some happy accident. 

Ghost Recon 2, Alien Hominid, Metroid Prime 2 and Baten Kaitos all come out on or about the same day as Half-Life 2.  I consider every one of those “Must Own,” but Half-Life 2 isn’t just desirable along the usual continuum.  I’ve played three full levels of the game, from wildly different areas, and I can say with very little hesitation that you are not ready for this jelly.

Gabriel the Elder and I sort of got into it over the game, actually.  Before he’d had a chance to play it, he asked me if I thought it was better than Doom 3.  I told him that it would be difficult to say, they were very different experiences, and other content-free equivocations from my bottomless bag of feigned objectivity.  After getting his hands on it himself he told me how full of shit I was, and how I knew all along which one was better.  I replied that, yes, I could have spoken with more precision:  it isn’t that you can’t compare the two, it’s that trying to compare them is meaningless.  The combination of Half-Life 2 the game, the Steam delivery system, and the Source SDK will define a new generation of PC gaming, usher in a golden age of man, and focus the mod community into a coherent beam which punches a hole straight through our notions of professional and amateur development.       

In that order.

(CW)TB out.

sharp darts, double dutch

I updated the PA Presents page with teaser images for a couple of our new projects as well as a new wallpaper. As you can see we are doing two projects for Brothers in Arms. I can’t say anything about the first one except to say it’s not what you expect. The second one is similar to what we’ve done in the past. It’s an eight page story and tells the incredible if perhaps slightly exaggerated tale of one “Jumpin’ Jack”, a soldier in the 101st airborne.

You’ll be able to see our World of Warcraft project here in just a few days. The Brady Games WOW strategy guide is set to ship on Nov. 16 and in it you’ll find about thirteen original comics by Tycho and I. Brady came to us and asked us to help them illustrate some of the concepts and rules that players who are new to an MMO might not know about. So you’ll see comics about all kinds of stuff like character creation, in game etiquette and the differences between the various classes. If you’re buying WOW this month pick up the guide and let me know what you think of the comics. It was a lot of fun to do and so I’m curious if you guys would like to see more stuff like this. Maybe even a series of books, “Penny Arcade’s Guide to Game X”. I don’t know, I’m just sort of thinking out loud here.

In other news EA grinds up babies to make their games. Well maybe they aren’t that bad but they do totally fuck over their employees. I’ve heard about shit like this from my friends in the industry for years so it wasn’t a big surprise. What was surprising is that the employees banded together and fought back. It will be interesting to see how this turns out and if it has any effect on the rest of the industry.

I haven’t talked about Halo 2 yet but that’s because I’ve been playing it every night. For me it’s a lot like Halo 1 in that I lost interest in the single player campaign almost immediately but I’ll be addicted to the multiplayer for months. Tycho beat the entire game and he assures me that I’m not missing anything. In fact when I asked him about the ending he swore and kicked over a chair. I don’t really care about that though as what I was looking for out of Halo 2 was an improved multiplayer experience. The addition of Live play along with new weapons, levels, modes, abilities and the possibility of DLC is enough to make me happy with my purchase.

We used to play Halo 1 every Thursday night out at the Microsoft building with some of the best Halo players on the west coast. Needless to say we didn’t really have any business trying to compete with those guys. We’d go there with our friends and anyone from PA was referred to as a “brick”. The idea being that if one of us was placed on your team we would simply weigh you down. If by some unlucky twist of fate we were stuck together to make our own team we were called “Team Short Bus”. When it came time to construct our Halo 2 clan we chose to go with the significantly more intimidating “Team Inferno”. It’s almost cool enough to mask the terrible shame I feel every time I load up the game.

-Gabe out

If we behave as civilized people do and omit Prince of Persia 3D from the true continuity of the series - relegating it to the realm of the misremembered and apocryphal - I can rightly be called a fan of the “whole shebang.”

I was not shrinking or circumspect in my praise of Sands of Time, and the long-haul, full night of play to complete it recalled the heady days of my youth.  As I’ve documented here in the post, I never know how to perceive the information they release about the sequel.  Every time I think they’ve altered to the formula to lean toward acrobatic combat, forsaking the platform puzzling for which I smolder with carnal lust, they release a video like this which seems to imply that they love me again and that things will be different this time.

Imagine my despair when reading Hilary Goldstein’s article at IGN that verified horrors which had been, to this point, confined to theory:  even by the halfway point, the fiendish puzzles were not present in any significant density.  A thousand curses!  But wait…  1UP’s David Smith says puzzle platforming is intact, but I’m talking about huge rooms full of light beams that I need to direct in some byzantine manner.   

The in-your-face motif, the hard rockin’ mosh pit audio, and the focus on combat are all calculated to attract people who passed it up before.  It makes me kind of mad that people who didn’t like the first game get to determine the course of the franchise at expense of people who liked the Goddamn game just fine.   

(CW)TB

Gamespot’s “Final Hours Of” articles have always really entertained me, and they’ve got one up for HL2 today.  Gonna head over there now.

(CW)TB