We ordered pizza today for lunch, to celebrate...  Wednesday Day, and it occurred to me that some wings might not go amiss.  Look at the box they came in:

Tycho and I agree when it comes to the new Black demo. We both think it’s pretty boring. It’s not a bad demo, it’s just nothing special either. I’ll say that after playing the demo I can’t imagine any reason to purchase the final game. However in order to get the demo I had to pre-order the game. Those tricky bastards.

The post at EBWorld, included verbatim in the strip, was so relentlessly on message that  we concocted a paranoid theory that isn't really that paranoid or theoretical. 

After seeing the many exquisite videos of Black - the "Matrix Trailer" in particular - there wasn't a lot of hand-wringing associated with our pre-order.  Further induced by a playable demo given out for such orders, we returned to our Batcave equivalent to dig in and congratulate ourselves on our no doubt excellent purchase. 

In our inimitable fashion, we have described to you in the past how the software they show in May at E3 is magically transmuted into the demo gamers play seven, eight, or nine months later on a coverdisc.  It's a snapshot of the development cycle, tree rings or some shit, and there are sometimes very real differences between that demo and what percolates through the retail channel.  You can see some things, already.  There's an effect when the player reloads in the newest videos - your awareness of the gameworld is cropped down to the weapon itself - that here's no trace of here.  One wonders what phase of the project this sample represents, because I can absolutely do without the game they're showing me here.

After seeing much better realized play spaces in action packed/meticulously prepared footage, the level, the gunplay, and the arsenal on offer really isn't anything to get excited about.  I shot through walls and shit almost six years ago in Red Faction, so you're going to have to bring a little more than that.  Are they thinking that we'll forget?  I wonder if they have a level where you eat dots.  

It's already a marketing triumph, with thair "gun porn" imagery having taken deep root in the gamer psyche.  Based on this playable, they are simply raiding the tombs of the first person Genre Kings - wicker baskets hauled to the top of the shaft, brimming with dusty genre tropes. 

After a couple nights of trying to get the new Chaos Theory co-op maps working on the 360 via emulator, I think it's time to hang it up.  It crashes, reproducibly, at about sixty-five percent of the level load.  It would be one thing if I could then go on to play sixty-five percent of the level, but it actually hard locks the console, forcing me to leave the couch and physically manipulate it like mankind was forced to do in the olden days.  I've crafted a novel solution to the issue:  I am going to play the game on the original Xbox, where I am told compatibility is almost assured.  I  wish that I had arrived at this plan sooner. 

(CW)TB out.

and the night got deathly quiet

The new Book is still doing really well. It looks like we peaked at around 24 on the Amazon bestseller list. We were actually number one in humor there for a couple days as well. Anyway I wanted to remind you that we’ll be doing a book signing tomorrow night at the Comic Stop. Here are the details:

An open beta is typically a subset of the final product, but usually they will call a beta restricted to the multiplayer portion a "multiplayer test," as id Software did in times of legend.  The Heroes of Might and Magic V beta is restricted to the multiplayer mode, is what I'm saying.  Also, it utilizes Starforce copy protection.  Fileplanet only has an exclusive on the demo for three days, after which it will be available anywhere - I learned all this (and more) from the Beta FAQ on the official boards.  Sorta wish I'd known some of this stuff before.

(CW)TB

There's a link over at the main page, but that link only goes over here, to the exclusive Fileplanet promotion site.  I've purchased subscriptions for lesser titles, but I think Kiko has an account.   The official site says that the beta clocks in around 70 megs, which is true: but only if you multiply that number by ten.  Eleven, actually.

(CW)TB

I think that even if a 4x galactic empire game weren't to your taste, you could still enjoy this article by Brad Wardell (or one of his pen names).  Essentially it is him playing his own game, taking note of what the AI is doing, and while he makes his own moves to defeat it he is also taking into consideration what changes need to be made to improve the game as an opponent. 

You can read the journals in general if his article made you curious about GalCiv.  The one right before the current one about the mysterious process known as "profiling" was also a good read.

(CW)TB

NCSoft decided to give us as many keys as we had readers who wanted to try it, so if a Mad Maxy sorta Car Wars MMO is up your alley you might want to give it a looksee.  They do need an e-mail you can check to send out your key, but other than that the whole process is pretty straightforward. 

(CW)TB

I don't know how much I can actually say about the inspiration for this strip.  My guess would be very little.

The last Electronic Entertainment Expo foretold - as a wizened sage might - the rest of the year as far as the handhelds were concerned.  You could see that Burnout and Virtua Tennis were, by and large, the whole of the PSP offering.  I liked Gripshift, but I'm fairly certain that's not the majority view.  You could also see a DS line-up that would come to seize me with a secular penitence - the online functionality began to coalesce there on the showfloor with Animal Crossing and Kart, strange stuff like Phoenix Wright was like "Hey," and there was a little golf game called True Swing Golf - no more than a tech demo, it looked like - that if watered and weeded with diligence could become one of the four or five games you carry with you everywhere.

That's not going to happen anytime soon. 

I mean it.  I thought I was looking at the gutted infrastructure of the thing before, and that's pretty much the delivered product.  It is lackadaisical in execution, form, and function, as though no human hand had ever touched it, as though the code had spontaneously generated itself.  The swing mechanic feels alright, and had the follow-through elsewhere been more uniform they might have been right to place their faith in it - but there is almost nothing here.  The helpful indicators on-screen are so helpful that they virtually play the game for you.  Usually I would criticize that, but here is a case where not playing the game provides a kind of soothing relief. 

Four player golf off a single cartridge is nice, and the only thing I will laud without a vicious parenthetical attached somewhere.  I've never actually leered at a cartridge before True Swing Golf.  It may have seemed to an observer that I was merely displeased with the small square of grey plastic, but it was my secret hope that my rage could sear the label.

(CW)TB out.

make way for the s o v

We put CDs from a couple bands we like up on the store, right now that means Optimus Rhyme and MC Frontalot.  Probably be a few more up there eventually. 

(CW)TB

The open beta for HOMMV got pushed back it looks like, all despite the rituals performed and the auguries...  Well, I guess you would augur those.

(CW)TB

Well ThinkGeek sold through more than 1000 of our books over night. That’s all they actually had so they are sold out for now. They have another 1000 on the way though and they are accepting orders for those. They will ship on Wednesday of next week from what I’m told. They’ve ordered even more from Dark Horse and it looks like that shipment will be available online around February 2nd.

It's fun to imagine that we do not traverse the Land Of Isolated Phenomena, but are instead bending the wild wheat of trend country.

Dan "Shoe" Hsu's manifesto of sorts and his somewhat brutal interview with Peter Moore seem to be coming from a similar place:  what he thinks the role of  the gaming journalist is.  Dan actually went in there and asked the sorts of questions you see every day online, in the indecorous language of the hardcore forum.  I don't know if the industry is actually rigged up to handle this kind of interplay.  Watch them spar over whether or not Peter Moore actually called for a re-review of Kameo.  See the crazy setup they build that leads into the backwards compatibility concerns.  You simply haven't read anything like this.   

Absolute as the barrage is, it doesn't really penetrate the fortified enemy position.  Moore is on message the entire time, and as the Corporate Vice President of Worldwide Retail Sales and Marketing for Microsoft's Home and Entertainment Division it's his job to create and project brand messages so I suppose he can be forgiven.  It genuinely appears to be candor, until you hold it up to the light.  I'd like to know the actual answer to a question like "what worries you about the PS3" without hearing about how he's growing marketshare or something.  It is my assumption that he wants to grow marketshare. 

He is in marketing.  

The idea behind launching the 360 months before the competition was, of course, to stake out a claim.  While that did happen, what has also taken place is that the entire burden of the next generation - the perception, the promise, etcetera - rests on those sports titles that developers could get ready for launch.  I know people who only play Geometry Wars on their box, and they seem perfectly happy with this state of affairs.  I've no urge to rouse them from that state. 

The machine is going through a kind of adolescent period at the moment, a chain of events exacerbated by the rigors of next-gen content creation, and in two or three months none of this will matter.  There's nothing to compare the Xbox 360 to, except hopes and wishes I guess, ideals to which physical objects have historically fallen short.

(CW)TB out.

'til she got her hooks in him

You can get it from our store, if you want.   I think it turned out pretty good.

(CW)TB

We spoke at MIT last year and had a really good time. One of the guys there apparently recorded the entire talk and has gone through the trouble of transcribing the whole thing. We spoke for a couple hours and answered all kinds of questions. If that sounds like something you’d like to read, you should check out Brad’s site.

The PAX 05 DVD is now on sale. You can see a trailer here.