Branching Out

Yesterday was Dad's Day and I hope you all had fun with or thinking about your dad.

I was sick last week, so sorry for the lack of content in the middle of my firestorm return to blogging.

I want to provide you guys with new and interesting topics to chew over, but I'm presently drawing blank. Is there anything nerd-related you guys want more of? Things I've written about you want done differently? Guest blogging?

Because this entry is kind of a cop-out, here's a picture of sad E. Honda! Comment with suggestions if you have any!

A great quote from Chris Bucholz in a Cracked article today on How to Destroy Your Highly Anticipated Video Game:

Children and immature adults: Please spend your video game time playing video games, not reading about ones that don't even exist yet. We don't actually need previews, whether about video games or consoles or anything else. Fundamentally, it does not matter to us what the next Half-Life is about until we can play it. It does not matter to us how much grit the next whatever has before we can pick it from our own teeth. And it does not matter how powerful the next Xbox is until we can take it home and it accidentally sets fire to our house.

I guess it would put a lot of advertisers, games journalists, bloggers, conventions, and other industry hype-beast handlers out of work, but it's definitely some food for thought.

The Last of Us: Ducking for Cover from the Cover-Based Archetype

One of the most applauded and original titles to come out of this year's e3 is the Action/Adventure/Survival game The Last of Us, about a "ruthless survivor" and his daughter navigating a post-apocalyptic world filled with fungus spore-infected humans and other uninfected people. The game -- made by Naughty Dog -- has, to this point, writing, environment, and characters all hitting those cinematic notes seen in hit pedigree games like Uncharted and Max Payne 3.

In an e3 presentation, we follow Joel and Ellie from inside a cafe, into flooded streets, and up onto the upper levels of a former hotel, before the duo begins ducking for cover behind a bunch of overturned furniture and around corners to sneak past fellow uninfected survivors. The Joel mucks the whole thing up and starts shooting from behind cover.

I say "mucks the whole thing up" in the same broad comparison to Max Payne 3 and Uncharted because the three are massively cinematic, story-driven experiences of characters moving down a linear, if not entirely always clear to the viewer, path. And this strong, well-set, well-developed narrative is disjointed by periodic combat sections that break up a flowing story to fire pot shots at bad guys from around corners and behind window sills.

I say this mucks it up because this is your only route down the linear path. There's nothing wrong with making huge explosions, mowing through small cities of nameless grunts, or conserving health by using overturned tables and chest-high walls. My issue is that, as a medium, gamers have been able to do that and more, and they've been able to do it for some time. It's for this reason, I feel as though the cover-based action-adventure and/or -survival archetype should blatantly steal from one of my video game heroes, Hideo Kojima.

I've made it no small point of public record that I'm a Metal Gear fanboy, but don't click away just yet! Love or hate Metal Gear's sometimes inedible plot, the series has always been about linear cinematic storytelling with many avenues to a single conclusion. The highest "ranks" in the series are issued to players that make it through the game with the fastest time and the lowest number, if any, kills. Combat is broadly discouraged; making noise and alerting enemies is often fatal; stealth is optional but generally indispensable.

When Metal Gear Solid 4 was released, the game added cover and first-person shooter elements (expanding upon initial strings of its DNA from Metal Gear Solid 3 and its similarly "beta" Metal Gear Online) to supplement crawling, walking, and running as methods through your various goal points. The game was released 4 years ago, in 2008. It's 2012 and our action-adventure games only have "kill all the dudes shooting at you in this room" as a progression option.

There is no reason that intelligent stealth options -- be it complete avoidance, silent kills, rendering enemies unconscious, etc. -- can't be incorporated into these games. There's no reason we need to rely entirely on cover-based combat to make it through a story. I don't say this as someone adverse to violence -- one of my other favorite games of all time are the Devil May Cry series -- but as someone bored with the constant hail of gunfire at an invincible point of cover, punctuated by return fire at enemies often too dense to follow suit. Variety, they say, is the spice of life, and there's a lot of excess replay time in giving players more and varied ways to save to uncover secret plots, or what have you.

And don't say AI couldn't allow it -- in both Max Payne 3 and the demo for The Last of Us, enemies frequently do not acknowledge the protagonist until he's entered their line of sight, fired upon them, or made some general ruckus (though some Max Payne 3 and Uncharted enemies suffer from omni-environmental comprehension, where stepping within a certain range in a given area automatically triggers aggression -- but this shouldn't be the case at all, if possible).

The most common complaint I've heard of MGS4 was that it focused too much on cinematics and not enough on gameplay. Uncharted et al have largely perfected that seamless blend of cinema with gameplay, where the two are almost entirely bundled together. Development of environment, setting, and character, technologically and through storytelling, are at the highest they've been in the history of video gaming. Game mechanics, similarly, have advanced to the point where your environment is just as much as tool in aiding your end goal as the number of rounds in your active weapon. But developers seem to be stuck behind these chest-high walls, rather than incorporating them into a greater tapestry of valid gameplay options that steer our protagonist from point A to B and all stops in between.

I absolutely love where we are in video game storytelling. It's certainly not art yet, but it's definitely at or greater than many top-grossing movies I've seen. But the industry seems too caught behind a single-minded notion that all the best combat is had leaning against and firing a gun from an environmental prop. Maybe there's more to be seen in The Last of Us that I can speak better of, but current billing for the game says otherwise.

TwitchTV Merges with Gamespot, Tears Shed for Those Lots

Mid-stream browsing (it was Counter-Strike 1.6, in case you were curious), I refreshed my active streams list to find that Twitch TV had underwent a fairly dramatic overhaul, where once games were easily found  at the top of the page, now they were under a wall of Sprint Ads and E3 excitement.

That's my entire screen without scrolling. Where once content was quickly and easily available (the active games button was only a click away!), now there is a search function, many requests to sign up for the service, and a boatload of gaudy ad-space (as well as content unrelated to streaming games, massive frowny face).

I scrolled to the bottom to see if there was the older link for browsing games (because why would a search for a game that isn't actively streaming, new Twitch TV formatting?), where I was able to find it a whole page scroll later:

If you can read that, Twitch is now owned by Gamespot, hence the glut of advertising and criminally messy layout redesign.

Totally not ditching the service, but really hoping the change of presentation isn't permanent... or that it even lasts for the rest of the night.

A new added "feature" (or rather, removal of one) is in the browse games menu: while number of viewers for a particular game are still active, the number of channels streaming content for that game has (at present) been removed, meaning there may be 20 streams of 10 people or one really big stream, and damned if you know until you click through to the game you wanted to watch. This is a huge gripe for me, as I like to watch Magic Online streams from prominent professional players, and it's generally easier to tell when those players are online by the number of viewers over the number of streams. I'm sure this could be avoided if I signed up, but with so many accounts online, I just want to watch some video game Internet television, not have to dance around with additional user names and passwords.

What's more, no way to tell how this will affect -- if it does, at all -- users' ad revenue/s. I know a major perk of streaming on Twitch was the ability to monetize your stream, and part of that was the helpful "reminder" the service gave you to run ads after certain time spans (obviously users are earning only a fraction of the revenue pulled in by Twitch site owners, but that's part of why you get the helpful reminders in the first place -- c'est la vie in the world of free online video content).

I'm a huge fan of Twitch, so I hope this turns out for the positive and that hopefully the change-over hiccups will be brief.

Good News Everyone! from e3

New Paper Mario!

Backtracking Like Sonic in Reverse

I could just make this a little note at the bottom of the last entry, but I think it's important enough to make a separate post. Plus, you get an editorial on my own editorial comments.

I won't for a single second say what Zynga or literally every single other video game company is doing -- throwing in ads in the middle of your video gaming experience -- is wrong. After all, you've seen ads for in-world products placed into games throughout the existence of the medium. While many game designers have used such space to add creative flare (Nuka Cola, for example) to their "game-only" products, sometimes you gots ta get paid, ya dig?

The issue here is that the products are free, or certainly close to it (in case math is hard, $0.99 is roughly 1/60 of $60 required for your average new video game), so a manufacturer needs to make money from somewhere to monetize their product and offset the expenses of labor, time, and all that other fun stuff. After all, love of video games and fun is a beautiful thing, but it won't keep you fed. Unless you eat game cartridges, I guess.

"But what about those Mountain Dew ads I skate past in Tony Hawk's Whateverathon 18 in the game I did pay $60 for?," you may not actually ever say. That's a bigger problem, hypothetical reader. While it's unsurprising that a booming video games industry would seek out additional revenue streams because that's the way running publicly traded companies works, you're also forgetting that the industry is one plagued with the same boon that makes games like Draw Something so popular -- people want free (or fractionally-cheap) entertainment and they want it now.

It's a two-headed beast -- on one hand, you have pirates who are not paying for your game but have a copy that they did not pay for; while on the other, you have an explosive game resale industry that is even creeping into stores that have only sold games new for the longest time.

In games resale as in games piracy, the manufacturer of the game makes $0. Nothing. None dollars. And while I'm not going to argue for either side of the debate in this space, if you are a publicly traded company and many units of your product are moving, but you are seeing no return despite that movement, you're missing out on money, and that's not good when your job is to make the money from the products you put out.

But, up until this point, we've opened our doors to this. All of the forum posts in the world complaining about ads in games haven't dented game sales. And for the advertisers, even pirate and resold copy players are going to be told to drink refreshing Mountain Dew -- it's a win-win situation for them!

My hope? Aside from continuing my vampire analogy? That creative use of ad space -- once again, Nuka Cola -- doesn't disappear. Ads in games aren't new or interesting, even if real-world corporate advertisements in-game are certainly a newer concept (not entirely, of course, unless you think the Cool Spot game for Genesis was unrelated to 7-Up's 90s mascot Cool Spot), but we've also seen some neat, interesting, fun, and original things come out of these fantasy video game worlds. I'm hoping that corporate influence doesn't completely kill that going forward.

Why Zynga Represents Gaming Vampirism

Dear Internet,
I'm sorry I abandoned you for so long. Did you miss me? I missed you.
I blame tumblr for my absence, that stuff's addictive.

Anyway, I'm back for the foreseeable future.

Some updates? Zynga. It's everywhere. This isn't the hottest news, but it's a trend I want to put out in modern gaming -- monetization of free (or cheap) content. John Cheese touched on it briefly yesterday in a Cracked article, but one of my close friends noted that she was surprised to see Words With Friends under the Zynga browser/app game empire, and now I can't help but notice it everywhere.

Vampires, similarly, are not a new hot topic. But the theory behind most non-sparkly vampires is that they suck out your blood, the smart ones don't suck out all your blood, and, most importantly, they can't get into your house unless you invite them in (hence the whole dashing ladies'-man mythos behind most vampires -- most people wouldn't ask Nosferatu to come over and play XBox).

The company "recently" also purchased Draw Something, as evidenced by the fact that my iPhone now cuts to the game when I receive new drawings instead of allowing me to get to my next text messages that may be considerably more important than a picture of a taco one of my game-friends drew (that's a lie; I drew the taco, sorry friends who play Draw Something with me).

The theory behind this is, obviously, "Wow, Angry Birds has a theme park and knock-off merchandise sold in China Town; I want a cut of that sweet omnipresent popularity money pie." While it's decidedly more difficult to market "Phone Scrabble" and "Phone Pictionary" in a way that doesn't break existing copyrights, especially absent "likable" mascots, the company has all available information app makers are privy to even with a free app and no ad space sold in-app, so the joke's on you.

Oh, did I forget to mention ad space in-app? Yeah, they have that too. While I've only ever clicked on an in-app ad twice because of gorilla hands, ad dollars are huge. You're seen in a Zynga game, after all, and everyone on earth with a phone that doesn't still have an antenna plays those. It worked for Google, and while Facebook is sort of flailing right now, it worked and may work again for them.

What's the takeaway? In-game advertising adds value for the game maker. While it may be white noise to you, the gamer, it's a new stream of revenue for an industry that is frequently stolen from or that even gives away its products. And we're still buying games (or downloading them for free).

If you clicked the above link to Cracked, you'll note that the static may start getting louder and louder with these ads. Just remember, we started saying it was okay with increasing frequency around this time. And I mean we -- I'm just as guilty of helping generate more revenue for their company as any other person. We let the vampires in; I don't know how much blood you have to spare, but hopefully they're smart about draining it.

Spiderman THE MUSICAL

Living in the New York/metropolitan area, I'm lucky enough to have access to the greatest city on earth. But with great power, New York, you have a great responsibility. Then you go off and do this shit:

I don't think anything in life could have prepared me for that.

If I could make a list of the top 10 things I hate most, that clip would make up at least two, with the remaining eight slots reserved for every other song on the Playbill for Spiderman the Musical.

This play is going to be so terrible that it requires a Surgeon General's warning for eye and ear cancer stamped on every ticket.

Spiderman the Musical killed JFK.

Watching this show is the cause of every bad thing that has ever happened and also will ever happen throughout history.

If you buy a ticket for Spiderman the Musical in person, the ticket seller is, by law, required to punch you in the genitals.

Spiderman the Musical is definitive proof that Bono supports and has always supported terrorism.

If this video is not removed from YouTube by the time I finish this post, it means there is no God, because no just and loving God would allow such an abomination to continue an infinite virtual life where it can never die.

Watching this play erases hope from the universe and completes the Anti-Life Equation.

Hearing music from Spiderman the Musical singlehandedly murders my ability to chain together humorous anecdotes about how bad that play is going to be.

Okay, I'm done.

Edit: One more -- Spiderman the Musical broke my blog's frames and killed my wife.

An Inebriated Look at Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

When I first started discussing the Scott Pilgrim movie, I referred to the screen adaptation of the Canadian manga series as "Twilight for Hipsters," based solely on a barely-fleeting knowledge of anything the book was about (in both cases) -- it was immensely popular among the alt-nerd crowd and was a constant topic of discussion on 4chan's Comics and Cartoons board, along with Avatar the Last Airbender and fan-drawn pictures of DC and Marvel divas farting. So, I had those as points of comparison to leverage a fair and modest assessment of Scott and company. Oh, and I read the Wikipedia entry for the comic and I think it caused me to develop some form of malignant eye cancer. As a medical journalist, I feel most adequately prepared to endure such a hardship.

Also of note is that I refused to read a page of the series, because I'm a journalist and have integrity. Needless to say, I was ready to be entertained by this movie, self-trolling or otherwise.

Given that I have all the logical faculty of two infants fighting over a toy train, I asked a friend for night out to go see the movie with me after we "prepared" beforehand. This ultimately turned out to be the best decision before seeing the movie, as it dulled my normally hyper-critical sense of viewership and allowed me to sit back and have the screen do the work for me.

Scott Pilgrim, if for some reason you fall into my "hipster garbage" stereotyped ignorant line of thinking and know nothing about the series, follows the relationship-related antics of an early 20-something living in Toronto, Canada. Scott is kind of a looser -- he mooches floor (and bed) space in a gay friend's apartment across the street from his childhood home, he's in an admittedly not-very-good band (The Sex Bo-Bombs) with his friend and an ex-girlfriend, he lacks any real job outside of his role as bassist of the barely-trademark-legal band, and probably some other things because the movie doesn't really go into much more detail than that. It is also clear, from the onset, that our boy is prone to making bad relationship decisions, as he's introduced as in a relationship with a 17 year-old Asian Catholic schoolgirl, which is both fundamentally kinky-if-you're-a-weeaboo and kind of pathetic, after a much maligned breakup with a past ex, who is, from the looks of things, doing pretty well for herself.

Our hero dreams of the mysterious Ramona Flowers, a colorfully-headed "hipster chick" with a good deal of emotional baggage not so much carried around as the baggage follows her around and challenges any potential suiters to a series of battles to the death. A League of Extraordinarily Childish Antics, if you will. The two meet in person once at Scott's girlfriend's school library and again at an after-party following a Sex Bo-Bomb's gig. Scott, while still in a relationship with the Asian child, attempts to woo the aloof Ramona, but lol, Michael Cera movie. Whatever sort of magnetism Pilgrim resonates apparently has some effect, as the two wind up making out in Ramona's bed that night and leaving with promises of a second date. It is in the coming days that Scott will meet the first of seven "evil exes" that he must duel with "and defeat" to finally win Ramona's love.

From the onset, the viewer is greeted with a pixelated UNIVERSAL logo over a chip-tuned rendition of the company's theme. This should give you some idea of what's to come -- lots of nerdy pats on the back, video-game like visuals, over-the-top meta-humor, and a readily apparent sense of self-deprecation. Or at least you should consider it self-deprecation. Look at it this way -- every time you pick up on a reference to some facet of nerd culture, punch yourself in the face, hard. By the time you get to the end of the second evil-ex battle, you will either be in a trauma ward or will find Family Guy really funny. I'm not sure if it's this constant wink-nod relationship with the nerds in the room (the adults buying manga-style books, written and drawn in Canada) that draws people to the series or is the exact element that causes so many others to lash out at the series online and otherwise.

The pacing of the movie is rather staggered. It starts out slow, which is fair, as there are many characters introduced early on with interesting backstories covered more in context than in brief manga-panel-animated cutscenes, but by the end of the third battle, exes start crawling out of every nook and cranny because, hey, we need to wrap this shit up at some point.

This necessary drive toward a timely end also stifles what should be one of the most interesting aspects of the entire movie -- development of the evil exes' backstories. Early battles are prefaced with the aforementioned comic-styled overviews of Ramona's relationship with the assorted exes, but this gets completely removed later on to the point where a DJ versus Indie battle of the bands is reduced to mere visual effects warring than the tense interplay between scorned and new love established in earlier fights. Then two fucking Chinese myth dragons shoot out of the dj-duo's speakers, and at this point I start screaming because I am not messed up enough to handle this.

And that was a good place to be, just inebriated enough to turn my brain off for a bit. If there's nothing else this movie has going for it, it is fun. Stupid, simplistic, nerdy fun. Sound effects appear as animated text, hearts fly around as the two dream-crossed lovers kiss, giant caps K.O. appear onscreen during an ex's knockout ala EVERY FIGHTING GAME EVER, the style of shots are arranged in a way that most visually encapsulates the still medium of the comic book onto the moving pictures brand of storytelling. And it all works.

Sure, when I see this movie a second time next week, very likely sober and following a day at the office, I will probably pull hair at how XD SO RANDOM Scott and his Asian date act. I will probably shout in contempt, "WHY IS EVERY CHARACTER IN THIS MOVIE IN A BAND?" I will probably boo the preview the new M. Night movie... again. But hopefully I don't get too serious'd the fuck up, because otherwise I'd be missing out on the genuinely enjoyable movie-going experience I probably paid far too much money for (the second viewing will be in New York, for price point reference). I will still not buy this Americanized manga trash, though. Gotta have some standards.

Fuck video games

I could not rage harder if I tried.

They released Devil May Cry but WACKY and with this instead of Dante.

BRB, crying forever.

A Tangental Review of DJ Hero from Someone Who Only Played It at a Demo Station in Toys R Us pt. 2

We've established that in this story I am presently located in Toys R Us and it's something like 9:30. Ok? Cool.

Never having touched a turn table in respect to DJing and because fake plastic instruments cause me to drop on all fours and start barking like a dog, I decided my best course of action would be to try the tutorial mode before playing the 3-song playlist.

My journey's beginning was an epic. The almost grandfatherly voice of Grandmaster Flash greeted me, affirming that he would help learn me some DJ skills to begin my journey to DJ Hero celebrity (a process easily summarized in the DJ Hero track "DJ Hero vs. Jukebox Hero"). The Grandmaster guided me through the various features of the turntable, including the 3 colored stream buttons and crossfader. To help matters along, Flash apparently precognated my love of the "Another One Bites the Dust vs. Da Funk" mix. Using this mix and a brief rundown of what each function of the table did and a following test of your new skills, verbal pats on the back were aplenty. I went for the real game's only song set of 3 for the demo station.

Both very afraid of the fickle looseness of the crossfader and unsure of how deep my skills at fake plastic DJing were, I set my sights on "easy" mode (as using my pinky on Guitar Hero's guitar actually causes me mental trauma). Easy mode limits your turntable interaction to stream buttons and scratches. Button presses run simultaneous with scratches, making the movement process only slightly more involved than your average Guitar Hero song.

Some of the scratches are very (read as: very) short and choppy and I don't think the actual scratching process recorded some of my back scratches -- not used to the process, I used short forward-reverse wrist motions, but apparently broke a number of cut's chains, simultaneously ending my note streak and dropping my score modifier considerably.

I am not sure if the turntable's crossfader is naturally limber or if disease ridden children's hands had fiddled with the device so often that it became looser than (insert obvious misogynistic joke here), but it made the process of cross fading and almost immediately disastrous process. Maybe I was too jittery, hoping to impress my adopted Grand-father-master, and just slipped a bit, but the crossfader -- a straight line lever requiring movement left or right to focus music on one or both songs -- easily broke my chains due to overshooting where the lever would need to be. I'm sure I just need practice and that many of you already playing expert are having a good laugh at my expense.

Anyway, playing "I Heard it Through the Grapevine vs. Feel Good Inc.," "Hollaback Girl vs. Give it to Me, Girl" and "Satisfaction vs. Boom Boom Pow" is probably the most fun I've had without violently beating others with foam and plastic swords down toy store aisles. Also because my ears were leaking precum.

Long story short, DJ Hero is pretty good, I guess. If you like "that kind" of music, I would highly recommend the game. One of my friends with more arrogant musical tastes in her club music actually greatly enjoyed many of the remixes I forwarded her after finding a torrent of ALL songs (thanks anonymous YouTube channeler!) and sending her a select favorite batch. Even if you don't, I would at least try the demo station or do a search for songs online. I've been met with shock and surprise when I admitted my addiction to the soundtrack, as apparently I don't seem the type to get a massive erection over egregious affronts to more classic songs being piledriven into techno and other electronic songs and then injected into my aural cavities, but then again I also really like a Notorious BIG/Miley Cirus mashup, so there's also that.

A Tangental Review of DJ Hero from Someone Who Only Played It at a Demo Station in Toys R Us pt. 1

DJ Hero is the latest installment of Activision's "Expensive Plastic Instrument Peripheral" Hero line of electronic entertainment medium. How does this make you feel?

I first became interested in DJ Hero not through being excited about the game (because what kind of guy actually LIKES video games?) but through a late night advertisement for the game starring digital avatars of the techno pair Daft Punk playing the most skull bustingly fantastic remix of personal favorite song "Around the World" mixed with "Television Rules the Nation" (which, at the time, I could not identify what the drop-out song was). Then the magic of television showed me I was not to expect some new godsend of a cd, but something possibly even more awe-inspiring: a video game.

For a few weeks or maybe a month, I basically ignored DJ Hero, only regaining interest when the Tee Vee would spam messages asking me to buy this game that wasn't out yet. "Thanks, TV, but this game doesn't exist yet!" I clamored, "Also I just really like these songs and don't want to actually work to have to hear them. Also I imagine carrying my PS3 (or my bricked Wii... or Xbox I don't own) around to listen to music I enjoy would be quite cumbersome!"

Well, sometime shortly after the game release, that same heart-on Daft Punk mix got stuck in my head, so I traveled to the last bastion of people who have no idea where to find audio files online go, YouTube.

DJ Hero had its own channel, sporting only bite-sized clips of the game's track list, a paltry selection, not even complete. A further search lead me to some game music connoisseur's YouTube channel (no link to save him from the lambasting of Activision - more on this in a second) to find THE MOST ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS COMBINATIONS OF SONGS I NEVER ASKED FOR BUT SUDDENLY HAD PIPED DIRECTLY INTO MY EARS CAPSLOCK. I spent the entire afternoon at work looping mixes while reformatting a spreadsheet I'd created and played "Around the World vs. Bust a Move" no less than 20 times.

Like any good user of the internet, I immediately made it my life's work to rip and iPod-ify this music, a task which spanned mere minutes after a YouTube MP3 ripping service created the equivalent of aural diarrhea out of the song and an immediate move to the /rs/ board of 4chan brought me in contact with some "new friends." The rest of Halloween weekend was me drunk off of song and actual drink induced euphoria.

Ok, so I'm pretty much the farthest into a blog entry and I haven't touched the game. Well, sorry.

Before the weekend ended, Activision started deleting videos uploaded by "my new internet best friend" on his YouTube. I was out so many songs, many of which did not appear in the RS files I'd found. Way to share love for your product, Activision.

However, this turn of events and potential incoming suicide-over-music-withdrawal led me to Toys R Us with a friend where I heard a very familiar mash up of Daft Punk songs playing in the not so distant background. A station was set up with DJ Hero. Now comes the part where I actually play the game.

...and we're back

Trust me, you don't want to know.

Let's Talk About: ZENDIKAR

Oh, I like Magic cards and stuff. Yeah.

Zendikar is the newest set, coming soon to a store near you the week after this weekend, which is the Prerelease for said set.

I'll be dressing up like a butler and greeting people at the New York Anime Fest, so you can imagine my disappointment that the two events are co-scheduled for the same weekend. Also, I want to win cards for being good at a game and make free money. Frown town.

Here's my primer for you guys on Zendikar Limited without cracking a single pack of the set, so take this with you to your local prerelease, release, or events immediately leading up to people who are professionals define what is or isn't good in Limited.

To start, check the spoiler on MTGSalvation, which is still about 40 cards shy of complete at the time of writing, but I've been scanning it for months now so you can clearly trust everything I have to say.

The first thing you want to note about Zendikar is that it's VERY similar (in a bare-bones kind of way) to M10 Limited: you're dealing with a slower format that requires you to build up a board and drop big dudes that are better than your opponent's big bomby dudes to win. Being really aggressive with anything aside from building up your board to support dropping your big, bomby dude is not as strong (but still a possible) strategy as, say, playing defensive guys early until you have 5-9 lands in play and dropping Iona or some other crazy stuff.

This also applies for most aggressive strategies in this format: aggressive Landfall-centric decks need a steady flow of land in play to make your 1R for a 1/1 First-Striker into 1R for a 9/9 turn 3. The other thing you should note is that relying entirely on dropping one or multiple lands every turn is not a good idea unless you decide to play 20 lands. This is also probably not good.

You need to get a balance out of your cards that rely on Landfall and let your "cards that cost more than them" do the rest. A good example of this is in UG - Windrider Eel is fine as a 2/2 for 4 that flies, but then gets huge with a land and becomes impossible with Harrow or something similar.

Another thing that carries over from M10 is that Blue looks like it will be horribly underdrafted. Although Blue lacks Divination and Ponder coupled with Merfolk Looter (though all three effects can be found in the set, lawl), blue has a solid early defense plan backed by a plethora of fliers, the only counterspell in the set, and extremely playable bounce. UG or UW look to be solid combinations archetype wise.

Black is also pretty good, as the "Vampire Theme Deck" of limited seems to recommend, but Black also lacks the sheer number of removal cards and life-cushioning effects it had in M10 (see Tendrils of Despair, Consume Spirit, Child of the Night). It still has retarded-good removal and its creatures are mostly all pretty good, but there is a decent want for a larger guy who won't get eaten by more defensive late drops or white and greens' "We're 2/3s for 2" men.

Red seems like a self-sustainable color this set, as well. This is probably more an on-paper than in-practice notion, but I'm ok with being wrong since I only ever splash red in M10 for Fireball and Lightning Bolt.

Allies also are pretty much all good on their own, except for several of the "Comes into play, effect happens" ones, like in Red and Black. They're GREAT when you have a deck with several Allies, but you need to really bunker down and draft them to make them worth the 5+ mana they cost. Also the Rare allies are fine on their own and bonkers with multiple Allies in play. Obvobv.

Until the spoiler is finished, this is my assessment of Zendikar limited. Top 15 picks will come when the spoiler is over.

Sup dawg I heard you like news updates so I put a news update in your news update so you can learn while you learn.

Getting hit with inspiration for a new entry while coming in and updating my tumblr. That's something to start your morning.

While raiding a drug dealer/chop-shop owner's home the other day, cops were playing Wii Bowling on the dealer's TV.

Personally, I think this is awesome (read the story, if you can follow up on the story, there are pictures of stills from the surveillance footage) and that cops should be caught trolling people they're busting more often. I don't really know if this is good or bad for the police, unless it drew out the investigation they were conducting (gotta get that spare in before you dust for prints, bro), I just think it's The Best that they give such a shit about the dealer that they're playing his Wii.

A 24 year-old lv. 14 buddhist monk (editor's note: there is no D&D style leveling system in buddhism) plays the vidya. Also, he suggests it's a good method of emotional output and a great relaxifier. Sweet deal. Worldly attachments are ok if they're vidya related (I will stand by this theory forever).

Oh, uh, video games aren't diverse enough for people who play them and they suck and are dumb and someone should make a good game or something, I don't know whatever.

HRRRRNNNNNNNNNNNN

More No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle News & Previews

Musings from a Magic: the Gathering PTQ - Edison, NJ

If it comes as a surprise that I'm a huge nerd when I use my free time to write about how cool it is that I found a Wobbuffet plush at Toys R Us, clearly you're out of the loop and should uninstall your internet and throw your computer out of a window.

This weekend, I decided I would play in my first Magic Pro Tour Qualifier since my freshman year of college, when I just missed the top 16 of an Extended PTQ by scooping to my opponent for packs after suffering from an ailment I like to call, "Playing Magic Competitively For 14 or So Hours on No Sleep." I was supposedly more well-prepared to play in this event than my previous one, so I figured my odds were pretty awesome at walking away with prize: I was playing the best deck, had the best preparation, had a great understanding of what the other decks in the metagame did (entirely based on the fact that I've playtested with ALL of the decks)... basically, I expected to do well, not entirely hedging bets on repeating my last performance but also not being entirely surprised if I did.

0-3 drop later, 2/3s of which can be attributed to "Really slow and ineffective draws" and 1/3 of which can be summarized as "I am a terrible player and should feel terrible," I walked around, $150 richer from a process I call "cleaning my room," and generally in a good mood.

My day's highlight comes not from being awful at Magical cards or the money, but from the processes I followed to enter and play in the event and my doings in and around the event. I decided to go to the event as ironically as possible (in the hipster sense of irony and not with any actual dictionary definition or irony or coincidence, as it is sometimes misattributed); I wore my 3-cat Keyboard Moon shirt, was playing with Pokemon TCG sleeves and had a Dragon Ball Z trading card game deckbox (from the late 90s TCG which I coincidentally played... only coincidentally because a friend who had not played mysteriously presented the box to me as a gift for use during the tourney).

The shirt brought about some of the best conversations I've had with people in ages, particularly since most of the people I've interacted with at Magic events in the past Forever have been scumbags and meanies alike. Some genuinely awesome bros (and Jacob van Lunen, Pro Tour winner, MTG.com writer and long-time friend/associate) started conversations with me entirely based on my wearing the greatest shirt known to man (possibly). My first conversation started with a man wearing some Hot Topic-esq "wordswordswords" shirt, a dog collar and chain, huge tail and shoulder-mounted wolf plush asking where the shirt could be acquired. If you missed the tweet, this was not meant ironically.

This was followed by a game with a man wearing a Gengar shirt in the same vein as my Wobbuffet shirt from the Nintendo World Store in NYC. During our match (which I lost to a mull-to-5 and "too fast" start games 1 and 3 respectively), we talked about the Pokemon DS game (spurred by my Pokemon sleeves) and various other malarky. Fun times.

My third round opponent was Ivan somethingoranother, though I like to imagine he was a time-shifted Ivan Drago, as his sour attitude (more from other people being jerks and the judges being UP HIS ASS) and thick Russian accent hinted at him being the future heavyweight boxing machine. The judges hounded him most of the match due to his lost DCI card, culminating in a judge telling him he would receive a game loss from that point on every time he did not have his DCI card at the start of a tourney due to him not entering his new DCI number into his phone IN THE MIDDLE OF A MATCH HE WAS PLAYING AGAINST ME. Dick move, I thought, especially since it didn't help me win.

After losing to Ivan, he proceeded to tell me an unnamed group of people "Trained me to play this deck like dog, woof woof." This was said jovially, but we should both pretend it was said over my felled and barely-conscious form as he pounds his chest with a boxing glove.

Not much else to say about the event, since most of the rest of my time at the event centered around wheeling and dealing, commenting on other decks people were playing, beating other people with my deck (people with better, non-drop records... COOL TIMING ON GOOD DRAWS, BRO) and slowly dying of lack of food and sleep. I went back home to play in a draft at my local gaming store to victory... which was a nice contrast to losing in the Big Show.

Conclusion: Playing Magic just to be ironic leads to the best fun I've had at a room packed with sweaty dudes and random girls there to either be paraded around by their boyfriends with ridiculously oversized jewelery on rappers or show up dudes with the "I'M IN YOUR GAME, HAVING A VAGINA" factor.

Video game pull: Uhh... the Garruk Wildspeaker from Duels of the Planeswalkers for the XBOX 360 was going for all the money or something, I guess.

I would crack a joke about /v/, but

Gamers are old and depressed according to Reuters.

A recent survey of 552 respondents showed 45% of those surveyed play the vidya, 56% were male, "most" had a high BMI and were around 35 years old.

Most female gamers were described as "depressed" and in poorer health than non-gamers.

Clearly my personal sphere of gaming friends are not representative of everyone, but also bear in mind that 552 people is not really a significant portion of the population - let alone population of people playing video games. Also keep in mind these are just the people who took the time to respond to the survey. While I'm sure 35, fat and older than your stereotypical Bro who plays Madden and chugs PBR is not the farthest stretch for "average gamer" (then again, enough kids who would not be able to fill out the survey travel with DSes and PSPs [or play Halo rotf lol] would probably skew the ages quite a bit in favor of the younger crowd, if included), the data sample isn't representative enough to say 'this is a guy who plays games.'

Also Batman is being heralded as "Game of the Year." Which isn't saying much as it's in competition with inFamous and maybe BlazBlue.

Cool Story of the Week: Pokemon Champion Crowned, His Parents Aren't Good At Video Games

11 year-old Jeremy Fan is the World Pokemon Champ, I'm assuming only through video game play (since the PWC is for both the game and tcg). The article Google News shot at me is available here. I didn't think that the article was all that good (half the time, it's about the kid's family... I want to know about his and his opponent's teams, about the event, about Nintendo, ABOUT THE KID WHO WON). I mean, you get that he can't play all that much. No, there's something else here I thought was a great resource:

"Humbly, unlike their offspring, neither Fan parent says they're any good at games. Jian Fan said when he was growing up in Fujian, China, people of his generation were too poor to have time for such things. And now, with full-time jobs in Silicon Valley, he and his wife are simply too busy."

LOL WUT. Thanks, Asian stereotype parents. Who thinks to include this stuff while reporting on a kid winning a World-spanning event. Like... he's the best at something... in the world... And we're talking about how his parents came from China and aren't good at video games.

Official "Cool Story" of the week.

All Time Lows, All Time Highs

I know my last few entries of "Nothing is happening and that's pretty much it so yeah" have been more than thrilling to my more than captive audience (of maybe two), but a google search for some good old fashioned video game news (you know, when I can't magically form ideas for entries on my lonesome) yields several low-tier titles, Tekken 6 (ok, not exactly the best example of "not low tier" gaming) and this.

That's when it hit me, "Mother of fuck," something I routinely say when I'm thinking to myself and need to have my mouth washed out with soap, "Video gaming is at its height. The economy is awful and we're celebrating a game based off of a half-decently rated parody of a campy summer blockbuster based off of a Hasbro toy line and 80's cartoon."

But then you have to take a step back for a second. The game is in 3-D. I don't think, short of the headache inducing VirtualBoy, that's ever been done before. And last time I checked, you could not make video games, let alone tie your shoes without using the bunny ear system (at least I know I can't); making games that can be played in 3-D? That's some kind of new-age wizardry that I can't even comprehend.

Then I thought about it even more... the Wii operates with 3-D controls. Yeah, you're playing on a 2-D realm based on a flat TV screen using some kind of avatar that sort of moves around in 3 dimensions but is still confined to 3-D. Then you have the new motion controls of Natal and whatever the PS3's equivalent of 3-D controls are (I can't be asked, as a video game news person, to keep up with this stuff). The screen pops out at you, but it's essentially no different than the 2-D imagery we're given through the simulated 3-D world in most modern gaming. Without physically controlling your game in that third dimension or operating in virtual reality, you're not really doing anything.

I'm currently trying to playtest for a Magic PTQ, so my ability to dig through mounds of dung are hampered a bit. If things don't pick up soon in the video game world, I'm going to start either jabbering endlessly about cool stuff that isn't timely or just start writing about other nerdy stuff that is. Also there'll be pictures. But no pictures for this post, I'm talking about G-Force. And that's terrible.