Penny Arcade

It’s quite true: in the near future, Mike Krahulik will be running Acquisitions Incorporated: The “C” Team for an unforgettable one shot tabletop experience to remember dot com.  I know what he’s planning on doing, and it is not dumb but is in fact super rad.  I knew shit had gotten real when he said that he had to go to Michaels.  And I don’t mean his house.  I mean like this Michaels.

When he starts loading up on foam and shit, fuckin’ make room.

I’m looking forward to his game on there.  I don’t think anything bad will happen if I let him babysit my universe, at least, nothing I can’t buff out.  It’s funny, though; when we were inventing The “C” Team, originally called the “B” Team, and before that Acquisitions Incorporated: Interns, I said we’d be nuts not to do it but that I could only commit to a couple games a month. I pictured myself lying on my back, soakin’-ass wet after having hauled by own body out of the surf.  I saw a man panting with the exertion required to birth worlds.

Or play D&D, whatever.  The point stands: I thought it would be the kind of creative work that is tiring before I started doing it every week.  It’s not, though.  I would describe it as the difference between flexing and stretching.  The latter enables work to be done.  It takes time to think of the stuff, and time to perform it, but the notes for two or three hours of play are twelve or so four or five word lines, a few metronome ticks and we’re off to the races.

I was surprised, is all, and now we’re like fifteen episodes in.  I only know that because I looked at the site.  It doesn’t feel that way.  If you asked how long it felt, I would pause a moment in consideration and suggest I’d started a couple weeks ago when it’s actually been four months.

(CW)TB out.

After Gabriel tried Arms during the Global Test Punch and bounced completely off the experience, I did my best to advocate for the game.  There’s something here, I said.  Discrete, particular hands are an illusion, I said - the hand is a mutable concept.  There’s a way to mash buttons playing the game but that’s not where it tops out.  It looks goofy as hell, but don’t be fooled.

I advocated so hard and for so long that I neglected to buy the game when it came out.  Maybe I was busy creating worlds or losing at Warmachine.  But there must have been some magic in that old silk hat they found, because Grimy Greeb has embarked on a fucking Arms journey Joseph Campbell would have perceptively catalogued.

Because he and I are not the same, he has approached the process with some measure of trepidation vis a vis his investment.  But he didn’t question it for long.  I can tell something has gotten in when he stops donning ironic armor for so much as a second.

The multiplayer service itself could always use a little spit-shine; that’s generally true for Nintendo platforms, and until the PS4 it was true for Sony also.  I’m fairly curious about shifting the focus of joins and chat to a phone app for the Switch.  I’m of the opinion that this is one of the smarter maneuvers in this space; I think about how simply involving a phone, as the Jackbox crew did, put their games in striking distance of people who never would have dipped a toe in.  Time will reveal its true contours.  But With Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Arms, they’re playing around with lobbies and playlists that are a lot of fun - drop into the pit, buckle in, and then just cruise as a sequence of novel interactions and interpretations of the game you enjoy fill the holes in your ruined psyche.

Hey!  We have a super cool Child’s Play event coming up that is a little different than usual - the Child’s Play Summer Faire.  I spelled “Faire” that way to impute an additional layer of whimsy.  The idea is that we’re gonna basically have a fun, fam-friendly party in support and celebration of Child’s Play.  We’ve been at it for fair bit now, and it seemed like - in addition to the Table Tennis Tournament, at varying levels of play - we could also have Food Trucks (plural), an inflatable obstacle course, VR Ping Pong, mini-golf, and other cool stuff.  Why not come out and celebrate?  More info is here, and tickets can be had here.

(CW)TB out.

I would have thought that Escape Rooms would be the kind of nerd shit that wouldn’t catch.

Brenna is a nerd, Theatre Division, but if I start talking about how Commander Farsight can declare Mont’ka once per game even if Kauyan or Mont’ka has already been declared, her eyes roll back into her head.  Not as a joke.  I think it is actually killing her when I get into wargame shit.

I think Escape Rooms lie at a strange crossroads, which may have something to do with their apparently seismic impact.  First, let me say that I was surprised to find that this was a genre of boardgame, even though it’s not surprising really; my suspicion is that these experiences could very easily undergo state changes between these two formats.  They trade on a fundamentally universal theme.  If you go in for RP or Theatre, R before E, your spores might bloom on such a rich substrate.  It’s also deeply social.  Succeeding at a task with other people is something our brains like.  They are, functionally speaking, engines of rich social engagement.

Gabe was trying to beat Unlock! with the fam, and I think they initially tried to institute a rule like the one in the strip but found themselves stymied by set.  Even with the clues!  They read clues and did not progress.  I have to assume that most of you have been around here awhile, if you’re spending time here in my benighted realm.  Try to imagine Gabriel reading a clue and then still not achieving success.  I mean, what is even the metaphor.

(CW)TB out.

I love Professor Layton and I love Ace Attorney.  Gabriel does not.  And it turns out that if you put both of those games together he likes them even less.

We have a bunch of cool shit on the store that you might be tantalized by.  Here!  Let me warm up the ol’ tantalizer:

This must be in the running for “most triumphant pin.”

Dabe swung through AcqInc to do a refresh on the basic design, and I love what he came up with.  Kiko’s immortal logo supports the human spine, literally and figuratively, like a marble column.  But!

We wanted to expand the offering a bit with this scoop neck one, too.  Buying this shirt is the easiest way to let us know you want more things in this vein.  Brenna has worn hers for, like…  two days.  I probably shouldn’t say that.

To maintain the AI theme, we’ve also got our Hex Chests in from Elderwood Academy!  They’re the crew that does our authentically bonkersville AI Employee Manuals, and both of those products come with a custom dice set of AI dice.  We offer these goods for your consideration.

(CW)TB out.

I’m not even interested in peeling the Exclusivity onion.  The only medicine for these Goddamn maneuvers is to tend a fucking menagerie of consoles so that you can never be flanked by these beasts.  Here is our exxxclusive guide to exclusivity - only at Pronny Urcrod Dort Crim.

My favorite thing from E3 so far is Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle, and I’m not makin’ a joke.  Well…  Anthem, also.  But I occasionally move the controllers on a Switch that isn’t even on, and when I do so, I am iterating a fantasy where I play this unlikely creature.  I’ve been getting way into Disgaea on Switch, it’s the ultimate platform for tactics games - superior even to the PSP and Vita, which held the title previously.  The care on the visuals is supreme.  It has some local co-op.  And this guy who made it cries in the video, at around the 3:45 mark.  It’s an act of worship.  Lemme at it.

One of the things I like about Nintendo platforms is that the haunted thicket of “platform” doesn’t exist there.  Generally, and this has been true for a while, you don’t really want to get a third party game there because it (generally speaking) can’t manifest with thee technical sophistication it would on other platforms.  It’s simply not where Nintendo puts their character points.  You go there to get their stuff, because that’s where it lives.  They offer magic wardrobes that go to a specific place and I like that.

If you were poking around in our expansive Acquisitions Incorporated Gift Shop, slick with anticipatory sweat, consider waiting until after 2:00pm PDT today before checking out.  I’m just saying!

I’m just saying.

(CW)TB out.