There’s a part of me that wants every update to this website to be substantial, something which makes typing in that URL or clicking that link worth your effort, but there’s also a part of me that knows the importance of finding new content, regardless of how worthless, every time you revisit a site while making your online rounds.

Vector_black and I tried our hands at some Half-Life coop, specifically using the acclaimed Sven Co-op mod. I don’t want to speak for everyone’s second favorite online personality here, but I personally found the experience ridiculously stupid, acting as an exaggeration of all the reasons I find Half-Life so particularly unenjoyable. To be fair, the mod is obviously intended for use on an online server where more than two people can share in the experience, as the original single player game has been super saturated with enemies, many of which come from the Opposing Force and Blue Shift expansions. Additionally, the mod has some extra fun little features such as spawning you at random points throughout the levels or magically taking away your guns as you travel through loading zones.

Frustrated, but not entirely defeated, I started up a new single player game to see if Valve’s masterpiece was still as boring as I remembered it. The good news is that the game seems much better to me than it once did. The even better news is that I still hate it. The game’s much easier than I recall it being, even on the medium difficulty setting. It’s not quite the constant auto-save, auto-load carnival which I always complained about. This is most likely because I (and most other gamers on the planet) have since faced much more challenging and interesting AI opponents. Additionally, Half-Life was the first FPS I played using both a keyboard and a mouse, as opposed to just using a keyboard. But while it may not be as difficult as I remember, I still don’t enjoy playing the thing. The game’s rigid scripting, and its habit of blowing up a room you’re standing in or instantly killing you via some random environmental hazard still rubs me the wrong way, as surviving such incidents has nothing to do with skill and everything to do with memorizing what’s going to happen next.

So! Half-Life is better than I thought, but I still don’t see it as the gaming masterpiece everyone else agrees it is.

Katamari Damacy, however, is a masterpiece, even though it’s doomed to rot in obscurity. As my second Playstation 2 title for that Playstation 2 I still don’t own, I was expecting Katamari Damacy to be a unique, entertaining experience. What I got was a unique, entertaining experience with an absolutely fantastic soundtrack. I’d call it the best soundtrack since Beyond Good and Evil, but I’ve played very few “new” games between the two titles’ releases. That’s never stopped me before. Katamari Damacy has the best soundtrack since Beyond Good and Evil. It’s ridiculously fun to play as well, and at only $20, you should have no excuse not to buy it. Hell, I don’t even own a Playstation 2 and I tracked down a copy, which was a much easier chore than I had envisioned. Though GameStop #1 had already sold its single copy, the local EB Games still had the one copy they’d received in stock. In fact, vector_black’s Dawn of War (he made it) turned out to be a much more difficult find, as we drove to GameStop #2 in the next town over in order to secure it.

While in this second GameStop, I happened to catch a glimpse of Chris Kohler’s unfortunately titled Power Up: How Japanese Video Games Gave the World an Extra Life behind the counter. It’s a book, a book which I then purchased. I’ve read about half of it since that encounter so many hours ago, and have found it pretty interesting. There’s a little too much page space devoted to describing the opening and closing sequences of Donkey Kong and Mario games, and a fairly thorough list of Final Fantasy music albums which would be better off as a .txt file at GameFAQs, but overall the book is extremely interesting, even to those of us who spend too much time browsing through gaming sites and lurking through gaming forums. The interviews which Kohler managed to score with the likes of Shigeru Miyamoto, Yasundori Mitsuda, and Masaya Matsuura (Parappa, Vib Ribbon) are especially interesting. I just wish I could figure out how the title relates to the book itself, because after that first chapter, we seemed to have strayed pretty far from Japan saving the world from death, using only the power of video games to resuscitate our planet. Still, worth checking out if you don’t feel really, really dumb paying $20 for a book.

Then I was actually going to watch some Warcraft 3 replays for posting on this very site, only to find that the 1.17 patch had already been released. I’d call that ironic, but it’s really just convenient (and totally false).

I think it’d be pretty interesting if I did something with this website other than update it to say, “Hey, look what I did today!” or “here’s my opinion on this thing I just thinged.” I almost think that used to be the case, that this site once contained more interesting content, but I’m too lazy to look through the (still unformatted) archives to see if that’s true or not. Either way, I win.

And finally, WEWATC~1.doc is now at 351 pages.

Last night, from 8:00 PM to 2:00 AM, vector_black and I cooperatively played through the entirety of Quake 2 in a single sitting. My love for the original Quake is well documented in the forums, so I’ll spare you yet another Why Quake is Awesome tirade. But I will say this: Quake 4 sucks. That’s not prediction, but fact, because if history has taught us anything it’s that a Quake game devoid of shamblers, vors, and chainsaw-wielding ogres is doomed to failure. A very, very commercial successful failure.

We also drank some ten-year-old Nestle Quick. Let it never be said that we’re not living life on the edge over here.

And that’s really all I’ve gotz.

If you haven’t done so already, and I know you haven’t, I strongly recommend checking out episodes three and four of Consolevania, whose sheer excellence has already been covered in this space before. Episode three’s a little lackluster, but still features extremely intelligent, insightful, and entertaining reviews and a wealth of pretty unfunny comedy sketches. But you do get to see one of the host’s testicles. So that’s good. I guess. Episode four, which will now be discussed in this same paragraph, is probably the best stuff this team has produced so far. In addition to great reviews of Winning Eleven 8, Gradius V, Escape from Butcher Bay, and Michigan (more on that one in a second), the comedy pieces and random sketches finally seem to be coming into their own, and with the exception of an extremely stupid “video game safety” bit, are all quite good. So, if you can stomach Bit Torrent and the massive file sizes, I strongly recommend checking them out. Again.

/shameless advertisement

So, Michigan. If you’re like me, and let’s hope you’re not, you’ve never heard of this game before. Sure, it’s mentioned in that column over at Gamespy, but who reads those anyway? However, I’m not going to explain its premise. In fact, I’m just going to keep talking (writing) as though you know just as much about the game as I do, having watched the fourth episode of Consolevania (see paragraph one) and all. The concept behind Michigan is undeniably brilliant, and if worked into something a little less crass, could become a truly unique gaming experience. Unfortunately, it seems a little too panty-shot intensive. Actually, on second thought, the whole “look between women’s legs” aspect of the game really seems to fit in with the rest of the experience. If I had some sort of magical, import-ready PS2, if such things even existed, I’d probably import this sucker and be extremely disappointed. So that’s saying a lot. A lot of

The Sims 2 too. After learning the hard way that Sims aren’t intelligent enough to take care of their basic needs like eating and pooping without a little divine intervention, I’m having an absolute blast with this game. I sure don’t remember The Sims (1) being this entertaining from the ridiculously small amount of time I spent with it. Currently, my neighborhood is the home of the epic tale of the tragically doomed Man-Well family, a gang of homeless street children, a strikingly similar gang of WooHoo-happy senior citizens, and a male nurse/novelist and the first female president of SimNation who plan on birthing the perfect son with which to seduce God’s Chosen. But I won’t bore you with the details.

And look at this: World of Warcraft PvP revealed.

(Pretend you’re reading this last night.)

It’s true; I’ve had Internet access since the 10th. I like to think I’ve been too busy to update, but I think laziness plays a much larger factor than busyness. In any case, this update should be several degrees of massive, with an extra helping of large dangling precariously from the top. Watch as I successfully blend a wide range of (video game related) topics into a single update, effortlessly transitioning between subjects and holding your interest throughout. Or don’t. It’s probably easier on both of us that way.

So, World of Warcraft. It’s difficult, almost impossible even, to describe World of Warcraft to someone not intimately familiar with the MMORPG genre. WoW is not the grand revolution in online gaming many of us, myself included, have been so desperately waiting for. It doesn’t stray too far from the gameplay conventions first established by Meridian 59, Ultima Online, and Everquest nearly a decade ago (and the MUDs before that). And it is criminally excellent in spite of them.

World of Warcraft is very much a traditional MMORPG. The level treadmill, the time sinks, and the monthly bill are all there, but they’ve been stripped to their very essences and built up again in such a way that it’s now nearly impossible to see where the seems once laid. To describe what makes World of Warcraft so much fun is to describe tiny design decisions and minute changes which eventually add up to a noticeably different whole. Quests, despite being varied and generally amusing, ground you to the world, for once giving you a reason to kill those wolves mindlessly wandering about the landscape or pushing you to move on and explore the massive world around you. Trade skills are no longer a hit or miss gamble, but a guaranteed success, given that you have the materials needed. Though only eight races, and just as many character classes, are available to you, each is distinctly unique and surprisingly fun to play (even the priest and warrior are interesting!).

Simply put, the game is fun. Not so simply put, the game makes you feel like a hero the second you step foot into the world. You’re never mindlessly killing rats in a basement or hunting roaming dogs. Instead, you’re fighting huge, menacing creatures from the get go, taking on and completing quests which leave an impact not only on your character, but on the gameworld. Additionally, you’re working towards more than just your next level, as you’re also working to complete a quest or two (or twenty), building up your trade skills (soon to be professions), gaining reputation with a specific faction (as of the next patch), increasing your weapon and defensive skills, earning talent points, and gaining loot. And all of it is inter-related. You’re simultaneously slaying murlocs for coral which is part of a quest related recipe, earning experience, finding items, and searching for trade skill materials at the same time. Every few swings you get a little better at using that sword and a little better at defending yourself, and once you’re done you’ll head back to town, up your reputation with the local NPCs, and gain some more abilities from that last level up. The game offers a tremendous sense of progress, surpassing even Diablo 2 and its famous skill tree system (which returns as the talent tree) in that regard. And yet you’re playing for more than the inevitable ding/gratz. There’s things in the world that need doing, and you’re the only one who’s going to do them.

World of Warcraft is also a beautiful game. It is a beautiful game like few other games are beautiful games. Personally, I’d call it a better looking game than Doom 3, Half-Life 2, or Quake 4 (honestly, have you seen those screenshots?). It might not push as many polygons or feature fully bump mapped textures, vertex lighting, or normal mapping, but it has one thing few games really have going for them: consistent, and by all accounts brilliant, art direction. The small batch of screenshots I generated over the two and a half days I spent in Azeroth (which now refers only to the world and not the nation according to official Warcraft lore) can be found here. There’s nothing in there that’s incredibly noteworthy, though I’d suggest checking out that view from Ironforge. And even those screenshots really don’t do the game justice. World of Warcraft is really a game that deserves to move. Sure, you might look at a shot and see nothing more than decent quality textures wrapped over low polygon models, but see the game in motion, watch the trees sway in the wind, see a coyote chase down a jack rabbit, fly by a cascading waterfall on the back of a feathered gryphon, and we’ll see how long you maintain that Doom 3 is the prettier game.

Perhaps the best aspect of World of Warcraft is that it takes place in the world of Warcraft (SHOCK!). Though anyone, from the casualist of casual gamers to the hardest of the hardcore will be able to pick up the game, play the hell out of it, and enjoy every minute of it (even in its very unfinished (by Blizzard’s standards) state), WoW is truly a game for the universe’s fans. Human players begin their lives at Northshire Abby. Yes, that Northshire Abby. A few levels later, as they enter Stormwind, they’ll find themselves in the Valley of Heroes, its sides lined with statues of mighty warriors who lived and died by their command in Warcraft games past. Should they hop on a gryphon and head to Ironforge, they’ll fly past Blackrock Spire and may even catch a glimpse of the Blackrock Stronghold itself. Night Elf players will run along roads protected by Ancient Protectors and enter cities populated by Ancients of War. Undead players will travel through the ruins of Lordaeron, and the very room in which Medivh delivered his warning to King Terenas, before entering The Undercity. World of Warcraft is a world saturated with the lore of three prior games, two expansions, one cancelled game, and several novels, and it’s a world many, many people will feel honored to finally experience first hand come some still very mysterious point in the future (by money’s on December).

Speaking of money (see what I did there?), I finally got around to reading Sharkey’s excellent Sims 2 feature over at 1up today. It’s not like I’ve had a host of other pressing matters which desperately needed my attention and were thus preventing me from reading it until now. I’m just lazy, is all. I think I mentioned this before. Anyway, the feature pretty much convinced me to order the game, so be forewarned, as it might cause similar results in you, easily persuaded reader.

None of you remember reading about that video game special, titled The Video Game Revolution, that aired on PBS a week or two ago. It was reported at Games Are Fun and everything. Tonight I’m just illogically turning the wrong words into links, by the way. Well I do (remember the show, not turn the wrong words into links, though I do that as well). In fact, I watched the damn thing, in all its two hours of commercial free glory. And you know what? I was extremely impressed.

The show basically served as an answer to anyone who’s ever asked, “What’s up with those video game things?” Besides acting as an abbreviated history of the medium, hitting historically important games from Tennis for Two and Spacewar to Super Mario Brothers, Everquest, and GTA 3. The show followed the industry through the arcade boom, the industry crash, and all the way through the present. Additionally, it also covered aspects of the gaming community, if there even is such a thing, such as LAN parties, online clans, girl (grrl) gamers, violence in video games (surprise, surprise), and Lily, a blind girl with an extreme love for Pokemon. It was all extremely interesting, even to self-proclaimed losers like me who already knew everything that was being presented. PBS even managed to obtain exclusive interviews with a multitude of industry giants including Shigeru Miyamoto, Ralph Baer, Peter Molyneux, Will Wright, Sid Meir, Chris Taylor, and Seamus Blackley amongst others.

However, the program was far from perfect. For one thing, they constantly showed the wrong footage when talking about specific games. They showed much more footage from Super Mario Brothers 2 (US) and Super Mario World when discussing Super Mario Brothers and showed clips from Counterstrike when discussing America’s Army. The Legend of Zelda 2 was shown in place of A Link to the Past, and every single piece of footage used during the Playstation montage was from a Playstation 2 game. Also, the stuff about video game violence, which kept surfacing and resurfacing over the course of the show, was pretty one and a half sided, which still makes it infinitely better than anything else ever televised on the subject. The conclusion they seemed to reach was “video games sure are violent” rather than “video games make you rape your mother and kill your neighbors,” which is refreshing, I guess.

Finally the closing segment on MMORPGs, their past, present, and future, as all as the social problems which might arise out of their rise, was one of the best elements of the show. It was extremely interesting and extremely intelligent, with many of the industry greats having lots to say on the subject. Overall, the show was far better than anything that’s ever aired on G4 and Tech TV because it treated the industry and the medium with the respect it deserved. It wasn’t EXTREME in any way and featured a host 99% of the world wouldn’t readily associate with video games. It was far from perfect, of course. There were some factual errors and the aforementioned editing problems, but it was still the best show about video games I’ve ever seen, all hyperbole aside. If you happen to catch it, I strongly recommend sitting down to watch it through to the end.

I wonder how many people will read this thing up until this point. My guess: not many. Though we’ve certainly had longer updates in the past.

Finally, my copy of Halo seems to have stopped functioning. It’s not a problem with the CD or the game itself, but with Microsoft. At first, I thought the problem stemmed from my using the ATI Catalyst 4.9 beta drives, as they lack a WHQL signature (or something to that effect). However, having downloaded the final version of the very same drivers, the problem seems to persist. I guess this means I won’t be murdering any Covenant any time soon.

P.S. This was all gravely important

After the standard customer service runaround + dumb, internet service was restored to our dwelling last night. Just in time for wedge to squeeze in a good day and a half of power-leveling in the World of Warcraft stress test before they kill it on Sunday. You should see his godlike tailoring stats — pumping out shirts and pants like a crazy mofo!

He’ll say “ding,” but nobody says “gratz.” That makes me sad.

(vector_black blinky router LEDs)