Let the Man Go Through

Yo.

First of all, I'd like to point out that, much like it's title, "Super Bon Bon" by Soul Coughing is one massive piece of musical candy, complete with soft noughaty center. This song never fails to grip me by the short and curlies and hold my attention for its 3:33 play length. And it uses the word "mezzanine", a term woefully underrepresented by modern music.

My reign as Lord and Master of All Things Football ended with a simply change of difficulty levels. I had been playing on Pro level, which one would think would be fairly difficult given that it's pretty hard to become a Pro football player. On the other hand, my beloved Redskins are pro football players and sometimes I wonder how they manage to make it out of the tunnel without seriously injuring themselves, the stadium staff and half of Kansas. Feeling that I was ready for the challenge, I bumped the difficulty up to All-Pro. This was, in retrospect, a bad decision. On the plus side, it makes the game more realistic in terms of your team's relative performance, on the minus side, I play as the Redskins, so the last thing I want is to have a game realistically model their performance. At any moment I expect Dan Snyder to barge into my basement, order me to draft a 4th string TE with my first pick and then fire me. It's a genuine concern. Plus, I decided to play my first All-Pro game against the hated Cowboys and they took me to school. And not high school either, this was pre-school where I spent the whole day practicing my letters and eating paste. I think Terry Glenn stole my lunch money too. So, it's back to scrimmage mode to see if I can put together something that vaguely resembles a successful play. It doesn't help that the CPU's wide receiver AI allows WR's that are quintuple covered to magically barrier tunnel through defenders and come up with the pass, while my WR's can't catch a cold when they've beat their man by 10 yards. Of course, if my QB didn't keep throwing the ball into the fucking parking lot, maybe we'd have a chance. Stupid football. Oh, and Sega, releasing your game weeks ahead of Madden doesn't matter if you squander that lead with server problems that keep people from playing online. Just some advice from me to you.

This article on Doom 3 is pretty interesting, for us hardware geeks mainly, but also because it shows how id, from the very beginning, designed Doom 3 to be able to run on a machine 1.5 to 2 years old. And not just run, but run in a manner that won't make you jealous of the guy down the block who just sold his wife for a new rig and video card. If you don't believe me, read the article and check the difference in screen shots between Low and High quality. The differences are pretty hard to spot. In the gaming industry, it's virtually unheard of for a developer to give this much love to older systems. It makes sense though as Doom 3, due to it's iconic status, has a very good chance of attracting gamers who haven't used a PC for games since the original Doom came out. If those people have a stock rig that they bought within the past 2 years, chances are they can play Doom 3, and have it look good, with minimal cash outlay. I know in past postings, I wasn't exactly thrilled with Doom 3, but I have to give John Carmack and his group an enthusiastic "hells yes" in regards to this decision. I'm sure it's made his day on some deep, virtually unknown subconscious level.

Finally, as anyone who knows me can attest, I am a whore for good web based comics. I read a bevy of them on a daily basis and am not in the least bit ashamed to say that I am sexually attracted to Shelley Winters from "Scary Go Round". OK, maybe just a little ashamed. Anyways, one of my favorite comics is Achewood, due to it's surreal combination of humor, simplistic style and cast of animal characters. One of the recent additions to the Achewood world is a collection of blogs written by each of the major characters, in the style of said characters. I don't think I've ever seen anything like this and it's fucking hilarious. If you've read Achewood for any length of time, read the blogs and then tell me that they aren't spot on. They should be as they spring from the brain of Chris Onstad, Achewood's creator, but still, it's downright freaky how good they are. Plus, they provide additional storylines that can't be represented in the comics as well. One current example is Ray's finding of a Ken doll that's like a voodoo doll only with pantsing rather than poking with needles. It would probably make more sense if you just read them for yourself. Go ahead. I think we're done here.