After much deliberation, I finally decided to create my own webcomic. I expect that the format / look of it will change quite a bit over the coming weeks until I find a style with which I’m truly satisfied. If you have any thoughts on the matter, feel free to add a comment or hit up my contact page. Thanks for visiting!

I’m not sure what convinced me to buy Geo Wars 2. I never even beat the demo of the first game. However, reading about the new modes and local MP had me willing to give it a shot. I’m glad I got it, it’s a blast.

It’s just hard as hell, especially when your reflexes are as dulled as mine have become.

I don’t have anything negative to say about it, unless you consider punishing difficulty a negative. I think this game needs that difficulty though; without it, the challenge of beating your friends’ scores would be lessened. It also helps promote one of this game’s strengths: short games. I’m really kicking ass if my game lasts more than 3 minutes.

My favorite mode is Pacifism, in which you can not fire at all. That probably has a lot to do with why I like it, since I can focus on sucking at moving instead of having to suck at firing as well.

I’ve played some MP King with a friend, both cooperatively and in adversarial mode. Adversarial is great. King is my second favorite mode, followed by Waves.

Considering how much buzz this game has gotten, I figured I’d check it out. After going through it, I can see why some people would like it, but it’s not really the kind of game I get into.

It had a nice art style, and the story seemed interesting. I admit that I’d like to see how it progresses. I also liked the jigsaw puzzle piece collecting and assembling. However, I didn’t really care much for the time-altering mechanic. And considering that it is a key feature, I don’t see me playing the full version.

I’ve been wanting to play this one for a long time. I really liked the first one although I really never got that far in it. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to try it tonight.

More info

A week from tomorrow I’m heading to Seattle for PAX. It’s my first PAX, and also my first time in Seattle, so I’m really looking forward to it. I can’t wait to check out Fallout 3, and am hoping that Left 4 Dead is playable as well.

If you see someone walking around wearing a shirt with the image below on the front, it’s either me or a friend of mine. Feel free to come up and say hi!

The latest Game Informer has a large story about the new Batman game in development by Rocksteady Studios. If the intentions for the game actually materialize, it should be hands down the most amazing Batman game ever created. Of course, that’s not saying much since Batman games suck, but this one looks really cool.

Based on the article, it looks like there isn’t really any time spent behind the wheel of the Batmobile. Seems like an obvious part of gameplay, but whatever. I don’t think the game comes out any time soon, but it’s one to watch for.

I survived the trip back from Seattle. One of my bags is now missing two zippers courtesy of the fine folks at Delta. They also thought it would be neat to have that bag show up at the airport 5 hours after I did. But hey, they made it right by delivering my now damaged bag to my house at 3:45 in the fucking morning.

Unpleasantness aside…. Seattle was great, and so was PAX. There was so much to see that I only did about 25% of the things I thought I would do. It was like Las Vegas but devoted to games, and much less organized.

The top 3 games I saw, in order: Left 4 Dead, Fallout 3, Far Cry 2. All were fantastic. Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe was also a blast to play.

My personal favorite moment was meeting Todd Howard from Bethesda and him telling me he thought my Spider-Man t-shirt was cool. I would have rather had his Fallout 3 shirt, but oh well.

Other people I met / saw: The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets (buy their music, they kick ass), Major Nelson, MC Frontalot, Jonathan Coulton, Freezepop, Morgan Webb, and Adam Sessler.

Traveling has led to my having less time this week to work on a full-fledged comic. I knew I wanted to do a series of single panel comics chronicling some of the goofy things I saw at PAX, so I decided to do 3 sketches over 3 days. Enjoy!

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

I’ve been playing Mercenaries 2 a bit, and while it’s a lot of fun, it has a few issues that really drag it down. I think the majority of them could be fixed by simply cutting out unnecessary elements. In my opinion, they have introduced too much complexity where it isn’t needed.

Here’s one example- in the game, you can ’steal’ fuel and money caches by walking up to them, pressing Y, and THEN summoning your helicopter pilot to come get them. Why do I have to summon him with the clunky support menu? If I said I wanted to steal the oil, that should be enough.

The PDA menu is also clunky, and just doesn’t work the way you expect it to work. I don’t know how many times I’ve tried to do things in it and found myself pressing the wrong button, because the other 99% of games out there use different controls.

Another annoyance- when you die, you lose your equipment. Getting it back doesn’t so much represent a game challenge as it does a thorn in your side that gets in the way of fun.

And really, that brings me to my final criticism- the designers really needed to go over each element of this game and ask ‘does this make the game more fun?’. If they had done that (God I hope they didn’t do that), this game would have a lot less nonsense in it.

Aside from my railing on various aspects of the game, when it comes down to it, the game is indeed fun. Everything blows up, and does so very well. That’s all this game needs.

My latest comic got linked today on bluesnews. It’s always nice to get some publicity, and blues is a great site that I visit daily. Thanks again!