I’m not sure exactly what the deal is with Tony Hawk, if the people in his orbit just never disagree with him, or if he operates in some kind of psychic Faraday cage, or what. But it’s asinine in the extreme to suggest that there’s no cause for displeasure with his product other than a spirit preemptively poisoned against his noble works.
His assertion - that of a purely a priori loathing for Ride - ain’t gonna cut it. If people thought it was going to be weird to play a game they’d been playing for a decade via a skateboard shaped whooziwatsit, well, that’s not exactly Crazytown, USA. I might go so far as to submit that this is a reasonable position. But that is all rendered prelude when, device in hand - or under foot - you discover that the board and the software form an inescapable phalanx of burning hatred toward the user. The game is bad on account of its inextricable badness. To be perfectly frank, the price of the product made me suspect the game of a competence it does not possess. It never once occurred to me that you could sell what they did, for the price they did, and not be murdered by angels.
The product is not euphemistic for me, nor is it a punchline, I did not purchase it to hate it, though I did purchase it - and at great cost. Even if I didn’t particularly like it, I thought, perhaps one of our sons may find some use for it, their minds untainted by the expectations engendered by three decades of electronic play. They can’t get penetrate the tutorial, though, so densely knit are the ambiguities of their infernal demon plank.
It’s like this. Come Christmas, if you should see a box beneath the tree that is long - unnaturally so - and thin, strangely thin, almost emaciated, you should be on full alert. Make a cross with your fingers, curl your lips, and hiss.
(CW)TB out.
flesh and blood and camouflage
Episode 2 of the Penny Arcade show went up last Friday. We’ve also put up a FAQ to answer some of your PATV related questions. The important thing is that PATV is sort of like a channel. Every Friday you’ll be able to hit the PATV site and watch a new show. Each month you’ll get two episodes of Penny Arcade: The Series. That’s what we’ve got up there right now. This is a documentary style look at life here at PA. You will also get one episode of a show we’re calling the Fourth Panel. This is essentially a video version of the Podcasts we used to do. This will just be the camera stuck on Tycho and I as we write a comic. Finally, on the last Friday of each month you’ll get a Blamimation from Scott Kurtz and Kris Straub.
The response to the show so far as been great and I appreciate all the mails you guys are sending my way. This is a really big project for us and like anything we do, we’re only advertising it here on PA. So if you like the show, do us a favor and tell your friends about it.
-Gabe out
I’ve gotten a lot of requests from people wanting to know what I think of my nook. I’ve read all the same reviews that you guys have and most of them are not very favorable. I think I might be coming at it from a slightly different perspective though.
I am what the ladies call an “early adopter”. That is to say I buy new gadgets as soon as I possibly can. I think if you are a fan of new tech, you tend to overlook a lot of the stuff that comes along with buying a brand new gadget. Often times they simply don’t work as well as they should or could. In the case of nook, the thing is just plain slow. I spent all weekend with it and I love it but my biggest complaint is the speed. From navigating the touchscreen, to the refresh when turning pages and most noticeably the disconnect between selecting something on the touchscreen and seeing it take effect on the big screen. Rumors abound that B&N already has a fix in the works and that we could see an update as early as January. I can’t say for sure if that’s the case but making the UI snappier certainly seems like the sort of thing that could be fixed with a software update.
Other than the speed, I really like my nook. It feels comfy in your hand, the touch screen looks great and the whole device in general is just very appealing. I love the store UI and the access to Google books. It’s a solid PDF reader and the book lending functionality is an awesome idea. Overall I am really happy with my purchase. I wouldn’t buy one for my Mom just yet and honestly my recommendation to anyone would probably be to wait and see what that first update solves. Since the device is sold out until February waiting shouldn’t be too hard.
My impression of nook is that right now its got a lot of potential. It just needs some love on the software side.
-Gabe out
The Dante’s Inferno demo was a nasty, incoherent facsimile of an existing product, and worse, it doesn’t seem to understand what makes the original worthy of emulation. I’ve played demos that didn’t communicate the actual product before - TRON 2.0 being the most grave example - so who can say what it means for the destiny of the retail product. This demo pierced the natural curiosity that might have weakened me in a retail context, and for this I am grateful.
It did cause me to write this ridiculous poem, though:
I implored him then, saying “Apparition,
literate of that swath beyond death
give to me a portion of thy vision.”
Replied my poet, with ragged breath,
“Thou must perform’st combos sweet,
‘til blackest bloods water the heath
In swift rivers, dark and rising, too fast to Tweet,
Giving succor to the Tree of Skills,
where purchas’d methods do thy foes entreat
To end with haste. Cleav’d by cackles shrill,
Thy scythe does make its grim decision,
Wreath’d about in multikill.”
