Thank you to everyone who wrote me yesterday to help with my DLP TV situation. The problem appears to be fixed now. I upgraded to component cables, I set the input for the PS2 as “game” in the TV’s menu and I turned off the digital noise reduction. All of this combined seems to have solved the lag issue I was having. I really appreciate all the help guys.

Grandia III's combat system, which we lauded in an earlier post, has remained engaging - would that some dark use of the GameShark could transplant it into other entries in the genre. But the plodding, insulting, maddening story has only gotten more inane as we have trudged through it. We have to savage it just to emerge from the experience with some intact portion of ourselves.

So I’ve been looking for a while and I finally got a new television a few weeks ago. I did some research and I ended up choosing a 50” Samsung DLP HDTV. Apparently I did not do enough research though.

I almost forgot. I’m six hours into Grandia III and it’s incredible. The best turn based combat I’ve ever seen in an RPG. I guess all the reviews say the game goes down hill after an awesome start. I’ll let you know on Monday if that ends up being true. So far I’m loving it.

I have not seen this pop up anyplace else yet so I’ll post it here. Looks like NCsoft announced their secret game. It’s called Dungeon Runners and they apparently have Joe Mad doing concept art. You can see some screens here . The game looks super early but interesting. Joe’s designs are are pretty amazing.

Well my comments about EQ II seem to have made the rounds. Judging by the response I’ve seen on line and all the mail I got it would seem a lot of people feel the same way I do.

Update.strip is now available.

You might have heard that Sony Online Entertainment was now giving away Everquest II to Fileplanet Subscribers, which we suggest may be one plank of an overarching strategy. Though it rarely gets to the final stage we detail in the strip, simply handing out the client for fee-based games happens all the time: Puzzle Pirates operates under this model, as does Meridian 59. Same with A Tale In The Desert. Gunbound, the self-proclaimed "Shooting game of new generation," used to be funded by players who paid a premium for avatar customization items. Might still be true.

If there was an Olympic event that involved creating concepts for comic books and then never completing them Tycho and I would have a case full of gold medals. Coming up with ideas for stories, starting the project and then never following through is really a sort of hobby for us. With that disclaimer out of the way I’d like to show you something we came up with last week.

I think I could be very comfortable just writing Annarchy strips from here on out.  Their construction is a bracing exertion for the mind, and I welcome the (highly novel!) sensation.  Aromatic continuity does make an appearance, but I hope you won't deny an old man his small amusements.

I suggested some time ago - around when Enterprise was cancelled, I think - that those at the helm of the franchise could no longer be trusted with Star Trek or our abiding commitment to the setting.  The fact of the matter is that they have perpetrated acts of a villainous kind against their devoted "constit'iency."  The addendum I made to that firm pronouncement was that videogames may themselves constitute a kind of "Final Frontier," a polychromatic reach wherein authentic experiences could be honestly generated - perhaps the last, best option.

You can only imagine my surprise when I saw that Bethesda - fabled genitor of the Elder Scrolls saga - had snatched up the license, for what I would guess to be a diner receipt and a Lifesaver covered in lint.

You'll recall that Bethesda also owns the rights to Fallout, in any case you should recall it, lest I cluck at your tarnished hardcore credentials.  Perhaps I should say they own limited rights - I believe that MMOs aren't covered, and their Star Trek license follows a similar pattern.  On the Fallout tip, the powerful need to interview them like a doting father about their intentions re: my daughter is omnipresent.  They haven't said word one since they picked it up a year and a half ago, though a first-person medieval RPG "set in the Fallout universe" seems likely. 

No radio silence of that type accompied the Star Trek announcement, with two titles materializing in the body of the release itself.  The portable stuff they announced looks pretty raw, yet - but we got an interview with the creative director on Star Trek: Legacy, a real-time game of stellar combat with a tactical focus for the PC and 360.  It is described as playing "like a squad shooter, with spaceships."  That doesn't sound bad, but I also don't really know what it means.  Dukes of Hazzard was once described to me as "Rogue Spear with Cars,"  when the formula was really more like :

Rogue Spear + Cars + Neurotoxin

(CW)TB out.

making too many problems

I didn't expect the information that we are surrounded (at all times) by online shills to reverberate so. I assumed, perhaps without support for the notion, that everyone else was as paranoid about this kind of thing as I was. I found concrete evidence of schizoid post farms to be a kind of comfort.

Hey we were mentioned in Canada’s Globe and Mail today! They have an article about Shilling online and they mentioned Tycho’s post about Hype Council. You can read the entire article online.

I was looking for some military pictures to help me with a project I’m working on. You never now what sort of digital adventure a google image search will take you on. Today I discovered www.petsinuniform.com. Maybe you’ve already seen this but if you haven’t its damn funny.

I made a huge PAX 06 post a few weeks ago when we opened up pre-registration. If you want to know why PAX is “like totally the coolest thing like evar” then you should give my old post a read. With the actual event still months away we’ve already got well over 700 people registered. Last year I think the final count was around 9000 attendees. I wouldn’t be surprised if we beat that this year.