You may not be aware that both Fisher Price and Nintendo are colluding with Muslim terrorists to ensnare the young, which might make it difficult to understand today's comic. You may not think that unintelligible samples or scarves are an effective weapon for global jihad, but that just means you're a part of the problem, Mohammed.

When skulduggery gave me access to the Resident Evil 5 demo almost two months ago, I was concerned mostly with how the arc of the co-operative experience would stretch over the full length of the title. Now that I have the actual demo and can play at my leisure - forgoing the cloak of night - I don't give a shit about arcs or stretching or any other Goddamned thing. I just love it. Once you get a sense of the information density on offer, you'll breathe a sigh of relief: here is a co-op game where, at a moment's notice, you can know your partner's exact location, their health, what items they have, their current ammo, all of it. It's a little weird at first, but the real-time inventory gives you a lot of power over your experience.

Because an explicitly co-operative game of Resident Evil 5's scope is an incredibly risky market proposition, Capcom had no choice but to include an AI companion. after playing through the demo six or seven times this weekend, watching organic scenarios unfold time and time again, it's hard to imagine that you could be satisfied with this synthetic creature. It's fine for what it is, but I think it's far, far outside the intention of the product.

I keep reading about "sluggish controls," but let's go with "obstinate" instead. It's more literary and more accurate - I would have settled for either, honestly, so this is a real treat. I would say that sluggish controls represent a technological or design concern that manifests in the simulation's inability to reflect your will. That's not the case with Resident Evil 5, or 4, or (I would say) any Resident Evil ever. The controls work precisely as they were designed to: to make you mindful of your play. If you don't like it, and certainly that is your prerogative, at least have the self-awareness to recognize it as the twisted, petulant sense of adolescent entitlement that it is.

(CW)TB out.  

say hello to the ground

I just wanted to post another reminder that we'll be attending the New York Comic Con this week. If you live over on that side of the country you should come by and say hello. We'll be doing some panels while we're there. One will be our standard Q&A style event and the other will be a little more interesting. I've mentioned before that Tycho and I like to go to schools and teach kids how to draw cartoons. Well we're actually going to try and do that as a panel in New York. I'll be teaching the kids how to draw some simple cartoon characters while Tycho talks to them about writing jokes and telling stories. The few times we've done this locally it's been a real hit and I'm excited to try it out at the show. 

I have a few things to mention so I'm just gonna break it down list style. 

-After Newy York we'll be flying to Pittsburgh to speak at Carnegie Mellon. Here are the details:

Open Q&A

Monday, 2/9/2009 - 2:30 to 3:45 PM

McConomy Auditorium in the University Center

Open to the public, although students get in first.

-We have some heart themed shirts that are perfect for Valentines Day:

I took my players into Thunderspire last night and we had a great time. One of my friends has a pretty new baby and so getting together once a week is tough for him. We decided to try something new last night and had him play via iChat. I snapped a couple pictures with my phone.

We propped the laptop up so he could look down on the map. 

Can I has dice?

He was using a basic online rolling app, which we had open in a separate window. 

I think one of my favorite things about D&D is the "table experience". Ideally all your players are together in the same room but sometimes that's just not possible. Especially when you start talking about 30 something year olds most of whom have kids. Getting all six of us together once a week is a real challenge but I gotta say this set up worked awesome. By the end of the night everyone was talking and joking with Travis like he was sitting at the table with us.

-Gabe out