No doubt there is considerable enthusiasm for the rumored couple minutes of Halo 3 at this year's E3, but I couldn't help thinking about the Goddamn deathmarch the people over at Bungie have been in for what has got to be going on eight years now. I guess I shouldn't invent motivations for them.  As people are bored by the time we have created the third panel of a comic, we may represent a statistical abberation. Maybe they still like Halo.  You know?  Maybe they are unstoppably enthusiastic.   Maybe they are angels and they can fly around the fucking room. 

As a mental exercise:  I really like caramel, but if I had to bathe in fucking caramel and eat it for every meal and fucking wear caramel for clothes, and then go to a building made out of caramel and work with sentient hunks of caramel I may find my taste for caramel diminished.

I don't doubt that Master Chief will carry himself in a valiant manner. I heard that he fights a polar bear in this one, and though slow to anger ursus maritimus - the White Devil - can prove a canny opponent. But Halo is no longer a game, or even a franchise - Halo is Microsoft's beachhead in an increasingly savage conflict. Bungie is ordnance. And what is ordnance if you do not expend it?

This and other thoughts culminated in this comic, which could be a part of a larger series but is probably content to be a single strip.  One of the best things about E3 is the ability to thank a person directly for their contributions to my idle hours.  Very often I will disappear into a game altogether, which I guess it itself a kind of compliment, but I am not given to expressing sentimentality here in the post without it being deeply couched in some kind of irony or insult.  E3 allows me to thank the Avatars of an Irrational or an Obsidian directly.  This comic is an attempt to do the same.

You might have heard where the thinking has gotten on the contentious Wii issue. While grazing fertile Kotaku, I saw a link to a "naming and branding blog" called Snark Hunting, whose lumbering host Igor suggests (for various reasons) that the name could not possibly be Wii. This notion has supposedly been debunked, but the idea brings such comfort that I am loath to be rid of it.  I perceive the concept as being mantled in a soft fur - eminently pettable.

(CW)TB out.

it's better this way

To be a PAX Volunteer?  To, as we say, take the black?   Are you Enforcer Material?  If it sounds like something you'd be interested in, then by all means - fill out this form and mail it over to Kristin Lindsay, who you may come to know as Princess Red Dot.  Saturday is the last day we'll be accepting applications, after which we'll board the Prize Bus and go from state to state presenting huge checks.

Okay, not really.

(CW)TB

A new episode of Downloadable Content - The Penny Arcade Podcast has been made available.  As always, you can subscribe to our iTunes compatible feed here.

Show Notes for 04/28/2006 - Whence Wii:

Nintendo Wii Announcement
Jesus Christ Superstar Lyrics, "Everything's Alright"
Xbox E3 News Portal
Xbox Live Widget For MacOSX

(CW)TB

I'm hoping this means good things for me - Namco Bandai just released their next-gen E3 lineup, and Culdcept Saga is on there.  It had been announced recently in Japan for the 360 of all things.  This is precisely the sort of game the Xbox seems to repel, quirky Eastern marvels with a strategy bent.  As I have mentioned, the satirical entity "Salad Master" is based on Culdcept, and Culdcept is actually more ridiculous in some ways. 

I mentioned it because I'm almost desperate in my anticipation, but also because it would give mean excuse to link the Babelfish translation of the site.  Automated translations are usually pretty good for amusement purposes, but this one is especially rich.  Don't forget to visit the different menu items.  You'll thank me.

(CW)TB

They had to throttle the podcast down to 40k or so, because it was burning up the equipment at fully one hundred megabits per second.  Between no podcast at all and a podcast that takes longer to come down, we opted for the latter.  Also, I just uploaded a new version of the cast altogether, with a couple edits and "Gabe's" volume a little more normalized.  We wear the microphones differently, which creates a much more pronounced disparity than I would have expected.  The new file being copied probably resulted in a few partial downloads - sorry about that.  Also, fixed the ID3 info. 

Update:  Um, the throttling seems to be truncating the files.  I'll let you know when it's "cool."

Ultra Mega Update™:   Utilizing a strange metallic disc discovered with a buried pharaoh, we were able to resolve the issue. 

Five new servers are being installed today.  The new hardware should hopefully put us out ahead of curve for a while.

Hopefully.

(CW)TB