News From the Wub

So I've fallen off the wagon when it comes to making regular updates to this groupblog.

The important thing is that I'm climbing right back on.

In the interblags, a few recent items of note:

First, on the main page of Penny Arcade, buried below the newspost, is the cutest story about Pokemon ever. It touched my heart, and I generally have all sorts of pointy bones and pale skin to protect me from contact of that nature.

I mean, honestly. Heart-touching moments from Penny Arcade? About Pokemon? Without even a hint of cynicism? (Well, from Gabe, anyway.) Make sure to read the letter Gabe received, it's all the way at the bottom of the page.

Certainly worthy of note.

Second: Girl Genius is finally whole and complete, on the internet, for you to read, from the very first page to the very latest. For those of you who have not been following this comic, I suggest you do. For those of you that have, the Girl Genius 101 section has finally caught up to the Advanced Class. It's mad science pulp adventure romance in a Gaslamp Fantasy world, by Phil and Kaja Foglio, and it is excellent.

Third: Several days back, Warren Ellis, (whose site is very much not safe for work, or anywhere else, really, I mean it. For serious. It's Bat Country in there sometimes) posted the first chapter of his new novel for the perusal of the general public, in a move he titled "Fuck Harry Potter.

Said new novel comes out in less than two hours. It would make a sad old Moon Rasputin on the internet very happy if you bought a copy. Also, you might like it. Or it might kill you, instantly. Seriously.

It's called Crooked Little Vein, and the first chapter is here.

The book carries a warning similar to the one for the website linked above, but probably moreso, as it is distilled and concentrated to a degree that his web presence rarely is, and he started out trying to write something completely unsaleable.

Obviously, he failed, but still... don't look at it unless you are prepared for incredibly unpleasant images to appear in your mind.

It's not a nice book, but I'm willing to bet it's quite a good one.

Fourth... let's see. We have pokemans, death-ray wielding women, and filth... Ah, yes.

Fourth: I'll be at San Diego Comic-Con this year, and will endeavor to blog with all my might in order to give you, the nonexistent reader, an idea of the chaos that is Nerd Prom.

I think that's enough for tonight. This has been the Intarwub News Service, with anchorman Zach Marx. Thank you for your time. Up next? We have no idea. Thank you for watching Eleven Names.com

For love of art.

Truth is, I was expecting a lot more from the new generation of video game consoles. With all the hype, I was expecting different ways of interacting with the interactive entertainment that I was told I needed to purchase.

Then something funny happened. Microsoft was the first one to get great games (Dead Rising and Gears of War), Sony camped out technology, and Nintendo decided to go with blue ocean thinking, and decided they were going to make theirs fun, rather than more powerful than their competitors. And that strategy has been rather successful for Nintendo. Unsurprisingly, whenever I get a console, odds are it'll be a Nintendo Wii, but that's oddly, not that germane to this monolouge.

Ultimately, I haven't seen a game that justifies the steep price of any of these consoles. Sony still needs to find a $700 game, in my eyes, and good as Resistance (Insomniac) is, it isn't it. Hopefully, it'll be the new Ratchet game (also by Insomniac), which should be eons better than Resistance, which bit most of its interesting technology bits off of stuff the last three Ratchet games. Much lauded was Resistance's "vision" to have players walk on ceilings, but much ignored was that you could do that in previous Ratchet games on the PS2. Maybe Metal Gear Solid 4 will do it. Then again, I played the second entry in the series, and while that was a nice movie, I paid for a game, and the endgame lost me entirely.

Nintendo, who has captured my imagination, has yet to deliver a great game with it. I've played Wii Sports and a little bit of the newest Zelda game for it. Still not sold. Nothing screams must buy, but then again, it is a good $150 lower than it's closest competitor, the Xbox 360.

Speaking of which, the Microsoft console has a couple games that scream must buy, which I've mentioned already. If you haven't played Gears of War yet, well, you should. It's the kind of synthesis of old and new ideas executed perfectly that ought to be commended from men in towers and people with trumpets. Dead Rising, from what I understand, is endless fun to play and has a spirit that most games would kill for. Unfortunately, the console on which you'd play those games is famously unreliable.
There's no way in hell I'm putting down $400 on a console that's prone to that many errors that have been denied and then fessed up to the company two, three years later. I don't have that kind of excess cash to spend on a wheel of fortune.

People who have venutred into my cave room will know that I do in fact, blow my copious discrentionary income elsewhere, but at least if I lose all my CDs, the files are backed up elsewhere.

However, I'm just fine with my PS2, which, I hear, will be down to $100 by the end of the year. That library, is probably the best and most eclectic in video game history, and paired with a console that works, great games that I still haven't finished and time on my hands, I see no reason to upgrade to the next generation. Perhaps, that new generation are like Hawkeye, Patriot, and whatever robot is calling itself Vision, they just need a chance to shine.

Whether that's the case or not, I'll be giving the current generation a wide berth. Maybe it'll find it's generation's Okami, or perhaps it's own Nick Fury to kick its ass into gear. If it does, I'll be watching.

Also, you may have noticed that we don't have a theme or any other posts since my last one. I'll try to fix that.