Ahahahahah Fuck You Jack Thompson!

Yeah, I had to post this: JACK THOMPSON IS DISBARRED! PERMANENTLY! And he has to reimburse the courts legal fees! And yes he can appeal, but only through another lawyer in good standing with the Florida Courts (yeah I can see tons of lawyers just lining up for this one)! Granted, this probably will be far from the last we hear of Thompson. Stopping him from being a bat-shit crazy lawyer doesn't stop him from being able to protest stuff in moronic ways (and even if it does, I'm sure the occasional slow gaming news day will have a "where is he now" story), but as a lawyer, the guy has & could've still caused serious headaches for the industry as a whole, now he's just another loon with no real weight. Ok, back to sabbatical....

Sabbatical

I think it's time for a break. It's just that I've basically been doing this blog for a few years non-stop and it is like a second job sometimes. And honestly as long as it was fun, I didn't mind, but with increased hours & responsibilities at my real job in addition to trying to have some sort of life outside of work on occasion, it's become more & more like a job I have to do rather than a job I enjoy, so rather than infrequent updates whenever I actually have the time and energy to write something, I'd just take a chunk of time off, recharge the creative batteries, and revisit this sometime in the future and see if it's still something I want to do. I'll most likely be back, just need to take some time & a little distance.

The Force is not strong in this one...

So, the Force Unleashed hit today, and after months of hype and hope it would be the one thing salvaging Star Wars while Lucas seems to making it his personal mission to sully everything good about it. But alas, possibly due to the hype, reviews have indicated it's just another average, flawed action title, just with the Star Wars brand behind it. Being that I made a goddamned video for the game, I'm fairly dissapointed, but if it's one less game to buy among all the others this holiday season, I'll gladly keep my wallet a little heavier.


OMG. SONIC. 2. IN HD., granted it's only a tech demo, but still awesome.

Miracle of miracles? EA has officially backed down from the seemingly inevitable and has decided to stop trying to buy Take 2. I'm sure your average EA-hating fanboy sees this as a blessed miracle, but the fact of the matter is that Take 2 isn't a healthy company and heavy infusions of cash will probably be needed at some point, inviting a takeover from somebody far less stellar than EA (think Sammy buying out Sega).

That's really all I have for today, but I should be posting at least one more time before Sunday, until then, here's your TRAILER OF THE WEEK: Four Christmases

It's Horrible to be free

Unless of course I'm talking about Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog! Courtesy of Hulu!. If some insane reason you haven't caught the best thing ever on the web, watch it now! And buy the DVD whenever it finally comes out.

Of course, that's nothing compared to today's release of arguably the biggest PC game since WOW, Spore. Potentially limitless gameplay sure sounds damn appealing, too bad my laptop can't even run the thing, so I'll probably just wait for the eventual console versions that are supposedly maybe on the way...

Like Zombies? Like Free stuff? Well check out The Zombie Chronicles. I admittedly have just found about this so I have no idea if it's any good, but I'll probably start checking it out as I've hoping for another decent zombie novel after finishing Stephen King's "Cell" awhile ago.
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Due to my schedule this week, I probably won't be able to do another update til at least Wednesday, so I want to put in a plug for the rather deranged and excellent season 3 DVD release of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia on Tuesday. If you haven't experienced the awesomeness of this show, check out some prime examples on why it's one of the best comedies out there ever:

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Whedon's Civil War

There are arguably no fans more diehard than the fans of the Whedonverse. But what happens when you pit one of his beloved properties against another? Unfortunately, this isn't some awesome fighting game with River taking on Kennedy. You may remember sometime ago, that there was news that a Firefly MMO was being worked on. Well now, in a move sure to excite some Whedon fans & infuriate others, that same company has effectively killed any development on the Firefly MMO in order to make a Buffy MMO. Now granted, Buffy (and by expansion Angel) has a longer established history and arguably a bigger overall fanbase (not mention appeal to possibly more casual fans). Also, there is the distinct possibility of any attempt to do a Firefly MMO turning into a complete disaster like EVE. Now, being a fan of both series I am excited by the prospect of either as an continual online universe, but I do think there is more potential in a property like Firefly, whereas Buffy could easily turn into WOW with Slayers and probably missing a key component of what made all of Whedon's properties so good-the writing. That's what made Buffy rise above your standard high school/college drama and your average sci-fi show. With that element absent, it's basically crappy fan fiction with grinding thrown in. Which also raises the question of how it'll even work. Can you be a Watcher like Giles or a souped-army grunt like Riley? Or will it pretty much be limited to Slayers & Vamps/Demons? Cause that already sounds dull. I would hope that this is a property they won't completely trash, but this could easily turn out to be a bigger disaster than Star Wars Galaxies is.

That's pretty much all I feel like writing about today, but I will try and be back of Friday with another update. In the mean time, here's your TRAILER OF THE WEEK: Sukiyaki Western Django

You can't play games at PAX

Sorry about no pre-Pax post, but I naively tried to do a mad dash finish for Persona 3 because though I'm somewhat close to the end of the game, I thought I was much closer. Suffice it to say, still not done. PAX '08 was a lot of fun though. Got to meet and get my picture taken with Felicia Day, which was definitely a highlight. Though I wasn't there for his actual concert, after seeing a few youtube posts of his perfomance. I've now become a giant Jonathon Coulton Fan and must have all his music ever. The panels were fun, got a lot of free stuff, and it was just cool to walk the exhibit show floor where all the games were on display but the crowd more than doubled from last year, which meant lines for big games like Left 4 Dead, Fable 2, Little Big Planet, Gears of War, Spore & Fallout 3 were akin to waiting in line at Disneyland on their busiest weekend. And when most of these games will be available in the next couple of months, I'm not to tempted to wait anywhere from 30 minutes to a couple of hours just to get a few minutes of play time. Hell even games no one gives a damn about like Gauntlet for DS actually had plenty of people playing it because everything else was really occupied. That's not to say I didn't get to play anything. Sonic Chronicles & Valkyrie Chronicles look awesome, Champions Online shows a lot of promise, and Resistance 2 looks like utter crap. PAX is bound to be even bigger next year, so rather than try and balance anything or try to just play games on Sunday when the crowds are smallest (which they were again this year, but still too big for the major titles), I'll probably just grab some schwag, enjoy walking the exhibit floor, and prioritize fun-looking panels & events rather than waste my time standing in line after line after line. The only upside gaming-wise of PAX is I got some much overdue time in on Tactics Advance 2.

One other thing I really wanted to touch on was Castle Crashers. Oh god is this game going to eat up my time if I let it. It's a lot like Guardian Heroes (the Saturn version, not the horrid portable version) with a lot of great humor involved. This may easily be my most played 360 title, arcade or console until Fallout 3/Fable 2 drops. And I'll probably pick it up again when I'm done with those two. This seems like it might be the last high-quality release for a little while though after a slew of really good ones as aside from episode II of Penny Arcade, there doesn't seem to be much on the horizon (at least for the near future, there were lots of interesting titles set for Live Arcade at PAX, just with no solid release dates). In some ways, this may be a good thing, as I'm sure most gamers will want to devote their time & especially their money to the bigget titles out this fall, and if something along the same lines as say Braid, which definitely needed a window where there was really nothing to overshadow it, were released, it would almost certainly be ignored and be a massive failure which of course leads to less of companies trying something new & innovative and daring which is why we have 400 billion versions of card games on Live but only a few daring originals.

That's really all I have for today, but I plan (key word being "plan") to be back on Monday with another post as I have at least one specific topic I really want to discuss. In the meantime enjoy this awesome video from PAX (which I did not film, which is good, because I am a horrible cameraman) of Jonathon Coulton & Felicia Day singing "Still Alive"