Back to back. This time about war time.

To make up for the fact that I'm uber abgestoppt and have not been updating regularly (also winning 12 hour, multiple Magic limited events), here's a double dose of vidya gaiman news.

Konami has recently come under fire for their now canceled title, "Six Days in Fallujah," a first person shooter that looked to recreate a 2004 Iraq war skirmish. To clarify, the title was cancelled due to the antipathy from those for and against the war and not because Hideo Kojima sneezed or something crazy like that.

While I'd like to have something snarky to say about taking video games too seriously, being able to fight in scenarios in recent history with people you may even know/have known and how cool that would be, or people's tendency to jump all over various forms of media just because it's entertainment that doesn't sit right with them and "people" have this ridiculous sense of entitlement to not be offended by anything ever, I think I'll have to call this one on a count of "too-soon syndrome."

The game was only announced a few weeks ago and was handed over to military simulation makers Atomic Games. The press release expounded the necessity to convey the heaviness of war rather than, I'd assume, running around as some kind of steroid-bound super soldier with a regenerating health meter and automatic gun/chainsaw combo that would easily overheat and probably kill you and any immediate soldiers in your vecinity before it could be used for actually shooting the opposing force. From the description, it just seems like the game would be handled in a tasteful manner as possible. Guess people just can't embrace alternative venues storytelling outside of the History channel or children's books.

I just shot a Poland Springs bottle in my recycling bin from my bed, I'm pretty sure I'm the best sports anything ever.

Get your Pokemon Diamond and Pearl carts ready

Final summary of NYCC is coming up, I have a lot of pictures to upload before I make such posts.
Before that, though, correction: Konami DID have a booth there, it just wasn't as huge and epic as its booth last year. My apologies to Konami and anyone whose feelings were hurt by my exclusion of them from my coverage. My opinion: it's hard to top back-to-back Metal Gear Solid 4 - Metal Gear Online 2 two years in a row.

This week, as of yesterday, starts the Toys R Us Shaymin giveaway event. Shaymin is one of the new event-only Legendaries from Pokemon Diamond/Pearl, much like Mew, Celebi and Jirachi in previous generations (this generation, we're gifted with two base-100 event Legends, the second of which is Manaphy). The Shaymin has the additional benefit of activating the Gracedia event in Florma Town in Pokemon Platinum (available 3/22, zomg) that transforms your Shaymin into its Sky Form(e), where its stats, typing and learnable moves change. If that's all jargon to you, lrn2playPkmn,bro.

The event ends 2/14 (nothing like catching an event-only Pokemon for your sweetie on Valentine's Day) and requires no purchase. Just be sure to activate Mystery Gift on your Pokemon cart by talking to the guy on the third floor of the Jublife TV building and inputting the phrase "EVERYONE HAPPY" and "WI-FI Connection." If you have 5+driving minutes and love Pokemon, you could do worse with your time.