Fighting the Good Fight

I have a new mission in life which has become a nearly all-consuming passion taking up all of my free time that is not dedicated to fatherhood, shoveling or napping. In a few short hours, I hope to complete 100% of Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption.

Needless to say, my wife is thrilled.

I don't usually complete games, mainly because I have so many more important and fulfilling things going on in my life it is hard and I am lazy. That goes double for Rockstar games like Grand Theft Auto and Bully.

While I loved GTA 4, the reality was that to "complete" the game, you needed to do a lot of running around in what amounts to a full-scale version of New York City. And while running around, you need to locate and eliminate 100 pigeons, steal a boatload of cars and do a ton of other side missions. Did I mention that the gamespace is essentially New York City?

Red Dead was different. I looked up how far along I'd progressed in the game and was surprised to see I was over 80% without really trying. For the uninitiated, this includes picking 100+ flowers in the wilderness, shooting and skinning animals and the usual busywork missions.

While Rockstar is known for its attention to detail and engrossing narratives, they took things a step further this time around and I have to admit I was a little shocked to be explaining the plot to my wife last night.

While I watched with varying degrees of interest as Roger Ebert battled the gamers over whether or not games could be "art," I found it a little strange to be covering character development and the plot twists as I tried to explain why I had just (accidentally) executed a horse.

While it may not be Citizen Kane, the characters had real depth and I had no shame defending my choices when it comes to time wasting. Again, my wife was thrilled.

What a wonderful age we live in

The wash of end of the year "Best Of" lists was made much worse this week by the one-two punch of the year and decade ending. I even issued a minor plea via Facebook to call off the onslaught of lists that took up time and space on web sites struggling to get anything up in the week between Christmas and New Years.

Sure, it's nothing new, but with the advent of embedded video, it seems like this is getting worse. Don't get me wrong, I'm more than guilty of the yearly, "What did it all mean" navel gazing that is behind these exercises, but just once I'd like a little more variety in my best of the decade lists.

Without any research whatsoever (yay!) aside from the handful of posts I skimmed, I can safely say the majority of these posts listed the iPod/iPhone, a major video game console, some sort of digital book reader and an extra smart phone thrown in for good measure. Add another five or so gadgets and you can stretch it to a top 10 list and be home for brunch.

While all of these things are wonderful - and I fully admit to a moment of wonder on a road trip this week when I realized just how amazing it was as my wife Googled a random question from her iPhone as my GPS hummed along and the iPod powered away for nearly two days of traveling - I would like to drill down a bit further.

Of course, I'm talking about the rewind feature on Forza Motorsport 3 for the Xbox 360.

If you are a gamer and you are a parent, this is perhaps the greatest thing to ever appear on your console. Forget the game-changing graphics and always excellent gameplay - this is the piece of the puzzle that's been missing for too many years.

Let me explain the problem. I'll be happily racing along when my wife needs to know where I hid something in the kitchen. In the few seconds it takes me to transition from death-defying 200-mph speed demon to figuring out where the paper towels went when we unloaded the car, I have temporarily forgotten that I am piloting a digital race car at high speed.

(Anyone who asks why I don't simply pause the game has never tried to execute such a complex maneuver in a high pressure situation involving a missing can of baby formula.)

About the time I realize my mistake, I have take that ground-based rocket and slammed it squarely into a retaining wall. If the car still runs, it won't turn and there's no way to get back into the race or get the previous 10 minutes back. This has led to unkind words in the past.

No more - borrowing a gimmick from games like Prince of Persia, you can now back the game up a few seconds (when your car is still in one piece and has its structural components in tact) and pick up where you left off. No muss, no fuss, no in game penalty.

Yes, there are much bigger tragedies in this world than turning a digital Mustang into a few thousand assorted parts strewn across the track, but try telling that to someone who now has to start over against that damned, cheating computer opponent who keeps kicking your ass in an obviously underpowered car. It's not rational, but trust me, it just is.

(Bonus points if this happens on the track at Laguna Seca, which is the bane of my digital racing existence.)

I cannot say enough about this feature. If Forza decides to repeal this feature in the future, they will have an angry letter sent the next day and a possible visit to their offices, depending on how centrally located they are to my home and/or place of business.

While Apple has certainly won the technology decade in the broad strokes, Forza (more specifically its developer, Turn 10) has won for day to day bliss. Mark myt words, in the end, this will save more marriages than Viagra.

(Image from Gamespot.com)

Less is gore

Wired put together a list of 10 Creepy Video games for Halloween and while I don't think I have played many of them, I did see a kickass new trailer for Bioshock 2.

I'm not going to lie - while playing through the first one, I hit a point in the game where, late at night, something jumped out at me and I shrieked like a little kid. I may have peed on the couch a little, I can't really remember at this point.

It looks like the new one is going to be much worse for our furniture:



So between this game and Fallout 3, there's a cool new trend that's much different than what I grew up with in my games - the use of downtime to build suspense.

Someone pointed out in a Fallout review that the game made them sad. Set in the greater DC area after a nuclear war, they recognized the landmarks and subway tunnels they saw daily, but devoid of people and felt down after playing. It wasn't about the gore (trust me, there's plenty) that made people take note, it was about the wait.

In both cases, you have games that are fairly violent on their surface, but make use of minutes between killing things to really mess with you.

I really dig that about these games, especially as someone who grew up in an age where Mortal Kombat pissed everyone off because you could rip out a character's spine if you pressed the correct sequence of 27 buttons at the right time.

I find it interesting that while game designers have infinitely more computing horsepower at their fingertips, at least some of them have decided to use that memory and graphical output to tell better stories (Bioshock) and lay out ambitious storylines (Fallout 3).

While a certain degree of this is certainly a result of more sophisticated gamers and designers, there was a time not so long ago where the thought of dialing back the gore factor and expanding the scope of the game would have been strange. Whoever made that decision the first time is a freaking genius.

The fight for your living room

If anyone has purchased a next-gen gaming system in the past three years or so, they have discovered one overriding principle in the experience.

The Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3 have higher inspirations than simply playing games or occasionally firing up a DVD when your stand alone player goes up in flames.

They're jockeying to be the air traffic controller of your entire living room.

Microsoft is starting to drum up more noise for their revamped Xbox Live content, which honestly makes it look like a Wii knockoff.

Most interesting to me, Microsoft has entered into a partnership to stream the instantly viewable movies to the Xbox 360 and straight through to your TV. Taking the laptop/VGA piece out of the equation sounds great.

The constant annexation does not.

I'm already uncomfortable with the isolation that's build into my iPod, so as Microsoft keeps making footholds, I'm a little uneasy with this.

Sure, it works out well for me as an Xbox owner, but if I'd gone the PS3 route, I'm out in the cold right now. It's not a stretch to see proprietary hardware, software and cabling taking the whole system down in short order.

I'm really torn on this one. On the one hand, I can't stand system-specific lockdowns that force people to buy only one hardware line.

On the other, this looks pretty cool and I'm a little excited to see what else is included in the next wave of technology. I'm guessing Microsoft wouldn't agree to any partnership with Netflix that leaves them a gap to stream video to the other consoles as well.

(Image from: TheTechHerald.com)

2K Games fails to keep up its end of our social contract

There are a lot of unspoken contracts in our modern American society. Seriously, just think about how much you aren't required to think about.

You go to any restaurant across the country and you fully expect to not only survive the experience, but to not get food poisoning or ingest any foreign objects like pennies. Likewise, when I buy a game from the store, I pretty much expect to go home, open the package, put it in my Xbox and start killing time.

Only, the video game companies of late have rushed games into production - sports games are notorious for this - and I got burned again by 2K Games which is rapidly turning into the biggest culprit in my little world.

That's not what's killing me, though. That special, irksome problem comes from the lack of respect for its customers that 2K has via its online help desk.

It's my opinion that the company is responsible for selling me a functioning product, especially for a console that has a limited number of variables. Granted, as Microsoft attempts to take over my living room (and next, the world) the consoles are becoming more complex.

Still the product should work out of the box, which 2K is now 0-for-2 on with my last two purchases. When you consider that Rockstar Games postponed the release their major cash cow, Grand Theft Auto, there's no excuse to ship a broken game to customers.

Barring that, the company should be honest and try to keep customers in the loop. If we're taking the time to go online and post to their forums with bugs and other issues we're essentially beta testing their games for free and that seems wrong.

For the $60 per game that customers plunk down, we really should expect more from those producing the games.

Finally, when users go the extra mile and do more than just throw up their hands at a problem and start flame wars on the boards - the "PS3 is better! Xbox is better!" arguements remind me of Billy Madison debating shampoo versus conditioner - they should have a human being on the other end respond, try to find an answer and let people know the updated status of their help desk tickets.

I sat down and wrote what the issue I was having, the steps I took to try and troubleshoot and the fact that the game worked for 45 minutes before crapping out. What I got back nearly two days after 2K said it would respond was a form e-mail that could have been sent without actually seeing my e-mail.

To add insult to injury, 2K won't accept a follow up from me on the issue for seven days.

I'm told to restart the game (duh), check the disc and perform a series of checks that my e-mail had already outlined as being completed. Then I'm basically told that the game should work and 2K seems to have the issue written off as addressed.

I expect more out of a company than a cut and paste job, especially when I'm taking the time to troubleshoot their defective product and outline what I've already done to try and make their game playable. Additionally, this is the second time that I've watched their message boards like a hawk to get word on when the updates to fix gameplay would be available. It's also the second time that their representatives have promised a date for release, seen that date pass and then hidden from their customers who only wanted to know what the new timeline looked like.

Seeing as I live for the new year's baseball title - which is locked up by 2K for the forseeable future - 2K's incompetence has me ready to buy a PS3 so I can buy Sony's baseball game next season and avoid 2K altogether.

Bioshock was great and all, guys, but not enough to make me ever want to do business with such a Mickey Mouse company in the future.

(Image from: KongTechnology.com)

And then I felt a little better

No matter how much time I feel like I'm wasting playing video games, I have miles to go before I equal this in terms of production and spectacle.

Thank you, Interweb.

See more funny videos at CollegeHumor

GTA V - The Windy City's Hail of Gunfire

I had a family from New York on one of my tours this week and in between discussions on the wonders of water filtration and sketchy government dealings one of the kids started talking about Grand Theft Auto IV.

It gave me something to think about from my childless ivory tower when the mom in the group said that she preferred being able to supervise her kids as they played video games at home because they'd otherwise be playing the games at someone else's house.

It wasn't really clear whether she was allowing her kids to play the game or not, but I still have no idea how I'd handle that situation. Either get the game and have all hell break loose in the home or worry about them playing it at a friend's house and being exposed to all the same foul language and unmitigated violence and destruction a few blocks away.

Tough call.

One of the kids said they really loved the game because it was set in New York. Considering the ongoing competition between New York and Chicago, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't very, very jealous of that 15-year-old right then.

A quick glance through Wikipedia lists a long history of losers in the video games set in Chicago department. Aside from a handful of racing games which held their own. I can only imagine the horrors locked away in the Blues Brothers 2000 video game, a cash grab on an awful awful movie.

The bottom line is that there's no real blockbuster title in the bunch.

The GTA treatment has been given to New York City, Miami, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, San Francisco and New York City again. When's our turn?

For such a good looking and iconic city, we can't get one lousy video game on a next-gen system? Is there any sort of voting process that we can rig? We're pretty good at that.

Sure, we have a governor that picks on the game industry and its rating system and a city that won't allow GTA ads on the sides of city buses, but what better way to avenge that than setting a video game in a fiction twin for the Windy City?

Until then, I guess Chicago gamers will just have to settle for spot-on recreations for Wrigley Field, US Cellular Field and Soldier Field. Well, that, and a Blues Brothers game that has probably been confiscated by the government and buried in a very deep, dark hole at this point.

(Image from: Wikipedia.org)

GTA IV is released, people who don't understand it cry

I've made the point here before that one of the major reasons I have an Xbox 360 and not a Wii is because of Microsoft's stable of games.

As someone who grew up with video games, my tastes have changed and I respect the fact that Sony and Microsoft can respect that. Not to knock the Wii, but it makes games for families and younger gamers and that's where they've found the ground to kill the other two systems in sales.

That said, as an adult, if I want to play violent games with zero redeeming social qualities, leave me the hell alone.

Still, whenever a new game comes out, people get upset and cry and holler about the need to protect our children and their delicate little minds. Considering GTA is marketed to older gamers, and is tagged as a "Mature" title - meaning no one under 17 is supposed to be allowed to buy or rent it, the whole argument seems pretty stupid.

This is just the current generation's battle ground for rebellion and a need for a ounce of parental interest and intervention. Where kids in my age group grew up with movies that were off limits, while others did not, video games are playing out in much the same manner.

I realized that I was part of the country's problem with language and violence while playing the last generation of GTA when I was shocked by the language and not the violence after playing for a little while. I decided I'd never let any of my kids play a game like that, if for no reason than to keep them from dropping N-bombs on the playground.

While that would take a degree of interest in a child's life and enough street smarts to realize that a child shouldn't be allowed to play any video game they can afford, I think it's practically the least a parent can do to help police their children's intake of mature content.

With a need to supervise kids online as well as what they can access on cable television, it shouldn't be that much to ask. Oh, and there's the parental warning labels on the game as mentioned above. It really can't be much simpler.

Here's the bottom line - while op-ed pieces like this one just recycle the "think of the children" company line from years past, no one discusses the fact that no one from the gaming industry of the publisher, Rockstar, says that kids should be involved with the game.

It's the equivalent of wondering what's being done to protect kids from the evil clutches of AARP. Neither is designed with kids in mind.

(As a side note, in amongst the foul language and senseless violence, there is actually a pretty solid storyline. This is light years ahead of games less than a decade ago, which makes arguments that draw parallels between movies and games that much stronger. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of violence and awful behavior, but not at the expense of a solid gaming experience. While I realize that anyone railing on against the game won't care, it's still worth throwing out there. It's also worth noting that the game lets you decide your path with regards to saving people that the crimelords send you out to kill. Make a judgment call and you get a different in-game plot depending on which way you choose to go.)

From the Star-Trib opinion piece:

Research confirms that violent media increase young people's aggressive thoughts and behavior and decrease their self-control and the inclination to help others. Adolescents who play violent video games tend to be more hostile, to argue more with teachers, to get into more physical fights, and to do more poorly in school, one national study reports.

Really? Kids who somehow get access to violent and wildly inappropriate video games don't do well in school? No kidding. I wonder if you find those same types of behaviors and grades at the intersection of populations of kids who have parents who aren't around the house much and those that have parents who want to be buddies and buy them whatever they want.

I'm betting there's some correlation there.

(Image from: IGN.com)

Less is more

Prompted by last night's off the cuff game review of the newest offering from the MLB catalogue and last month's Wired Magazine's piece on 37signals and their gospel of keeping things as simple as possible, I'm really seeing the benefit of keeping things at their most basic.

As I was working on 2K8's learning curve last night, it struck me that the game would be all but impossible to pick up and play, which is probably accounting for the amount of complaining that is flooding 2K Sports' message boards.

Setting aside the buggy nature of the game and the insulting game manual which incorrectly recycles last year's instructions and even reuses in-game screen caps for the help manuals found in the game itself, the game isn't very user-friendly for the casual gamer.

You only need to look to the runaway success of the Nintendo Wii to see the backlash against sim-type games is landing squarely against the old guard of sports games. Madden is all but unplayable for casual gamers and as a result, the market is making room for stripped down versions of games and over the top arcade style offerings that aren't really in the spirit of the sports people are trying to play.

If I'm a six-year-old today, my options are to play incredibly difficult sim-type baseball games or cartoony slugfests like The Bigs. Actually, that game is pretty entertaining, but if you're a budding baseball nut, you're pretty much out of luck unless you spend all of your time indoors working on the game or are blessed with above-average coordination.

Fun, huh?

For most of these titles, I employ "The Jeff Test" which is to play for a little while and try to gauge how simple it would be for me to explain the mechanics to my brother-in-law before we both get pissed off and play something else instead.

New last night is "The Rich Test" where I realize that I need to e-mail my boss this morning to warn him about the game before he blows 60 bucks on it for his son.

This brings things around full circle for the post, as with the improvements made this year, the team at 2K Sports seems to be trying to create a handheld Wii for every platform and the result is unnecessarily complicated. Does it really make for a better game to throw the ball from the outfield by moving the thumbstick instead of pressing a button to throw to the corresponding base like every other game that has ever been produced?

I don't mind 2K taking chances, just not when the gameplay has gaps and changes made that aren't necessary. Pulling from Wired:

After college, Fried returned to his native Chicago, where he formed 37signals — a Web design firm, named in esoteric reference to SETI — and posted a manifesto on his homepage that railed against the shortcomings of most software. ("The Web should empower, not frustrate," he wrote. "Just because you can doesn't mean you should.") On his protoblog, Signal vs. Noise, he further developed his philosophy. "Remember — size does matter: A small group of 10 great people will outproduce, outwork, outthink a large group of 50 average people."

Try and keep that in mind for 2K9 - empower, stop frustrating.

(Image from: ViewImages.com)

Shake your ass

I've watched this over and over again and still can't explain why it's continuing to crack me up.

There's actually a "rule" in video game design that says you can't make a human in a game look "too" real because the person playing the game will reject it. Basically, designers can make incredibly detailed and technically realistic human beings, but there is a point of diminishing returns that takes over and ruins the gaming experience.

I think this might be the opposite of that.

Arrrrr... you ready for a new video game?

I'm watching the press from Flying Lab Software regarding the January 22 release of Pirates of the Burning Seas which looks like it should be a pretty rad online game.

Imagine World of Warcraft but with totally kickass pirates instead of sissypants elves and such. Tactical ship battles and swordplay? I'm so in.

I'm hoping for the following:

* The ability to make people walk the plank. Preferably scurvy dogs.

* Some sort of pirate monkey like in the Disney movies.

* Rum. Lots of rum.

* Parrot-related costume pieces.

* Parrot shit down the backs of really rough pirates.

(Image from: wickedstageact2.typepad.com)

Master P is at it again

Here's an interesting write up I found on what is pound for pound the best gaming review site on the Internet, Gamespot.com.

Master P and Seth Green's Stoopid Monkey production company are getting together and are pitching a video game. A rap music industry sim. No joke. I suggest Cap a Fool Tycoon if they haven't picked a name yet.

Better than that news is the snarky write up Gamespot gave the announcement - though with Master P, a resume and asset listing is pretty much pure comedy.

Titled Play the Industry, the game is being developed by Stoopid Monkey Productions and ShadowMachine Films, the TV production companies behind the Cartoon Network series Robot Chicken and Moral Orel. The two will partner with P Miller Enterprises, the investment company Master P set up to fund his various nonmusic ventures, which include real estate holdings, a fast food franchise, a sports management firm, and a phone sex line. Master P--real name Percy Miller--has also been giving wealth creation seminars at the Learning Annex.

As for the game itself, Play the Industry will be a hip-hop-themed role-playing game that will see players earn fame and fortune as a musician, professional athlete, or "power broker." "You can play agent, you can play mogul, you play all sorts of different characters," Stoopid Monkey head Matthew Seinrech told the Reporter.

This game has all sorts of possibilities both to be a fun game or to be an unmitigated disaster and thus become a go to punchline for gamers.

For anyone who refuses to believe that this game won't get made, obviously didn't hear about 50 Cent's steaming turd of a game two years ago. Think Kazaam, but for XBox.

(Image from: HipHopArchive.org)

Happy Madden Day

Yes, I still went to work.

No, I don't own Madden yet, with baseball season running so hot still.

Yes, I'm a little sad that the ambulance is no longer a feature in the game. I'm telling you, if you made a mod to return the ambulance to Madden and to make little Wayne's head bleed in NHL, you'd be a rich man or woman, virtually overnight.



Thanks to Our Book of Scrap for the video.

Madden is done screwing around

One of the stranger things in the Madden football series was how low- to mid-level teams could climb the ladder in the matter of a few seasons, see rookies blossom and have contender in Texas or Detroit.

No more.

The guys at EA Sports are tweaking the teams and we can only hope that if your team sucks (and continues to suck) that it will start to show up in the game as well.

(Can I also say I'm loving the idea that the game creates championship rings when you're playing your buddies online? And that you can rename them as well? Get ready for the Super Bad King Badass Championship Ring coming soon to a console near you.)

Not only will this give you a better game experience - instead of the round-robin effect you get from multiple seasons where every team gets a shot - but it will make things more challenging for gamers who refuse to put the game down.

After you've run through a season or two with your favorite team, I know plenty of guys who will pick up with one of the bottom feeding teams for a better challenge.

My only request is that if this becomes a feature where teams will be perpetually awful, can we call it "The Millen Factor?"

"Millification?"

(Image from Gamespot.com)

It's coming, bitches...

Oh, hell yes.

Grand Theft Auto 4 might be a few months out, but the new trailer is up on G4 and was on television tonight.

The funny thing is that I was just having a discussion about the GTA series at work and how weird it will be to hide video games from my kids because they are too violent or foul-mouthed (the video games, not the kids... well, probably the kids, too).

GTA is a series like that, where awful language and the ability to kill every living thing in the game combine to make it hard to have around the house and still keep the DCFS at bay.

So, enjoy - this trailer is probably the safest series of images for the new game you're likely to see. That's not saying a whole lot.

Oh, hell yes

This recent post from The Last Boss, a phenomenal blog about video games and the nerds that love them, says what I've always known to be true: Video games are good for you.

I dug the picture they used so much that I totally ripped it off. I could scour the interweb for weeks and not find a better picture to go here, so, sorry fellas.

Anyways, aside from rampant obesity, anti-social tendancies and the dreaded Nintendo thumb, video games actually help you out quite a bit.

To quote The Boss:

Daphne Bavelier, the professor of brain and cognitive sciences at Rochester, said that "these games push the human visual system to the limits and the brain adapts to it. That learning carries over into other activities and possibly everyday life." The study involved giving eye examinations to a group of people, and then divided them into two groups. One group played a visually boring game for an hour each day, while the other group played a shooter game each day. The ones that Jack Thompson would surely despise, ended up scoring much better on the eye test after the study was over.

That's so rad.

I don't even know where I'll begin to extoll the virtues of this study, but I think the first stop is an e-mail to my mom.

(Image from TheLastBoss.com)

The thing they don't tell you

I was on my way home from work when I saw the first wisps of smoke from the orphanage.

Risking life and limb, I sped to the fire and started grabbing as many kids as I could, fighting smoke and flame to save orphan after orphan until the fire department could arrive.

That's why it's been so quiet here lately. That, or I got an XBox 360.

Oh, Microsoft will sing all day about the upgrades to graphics, processing speeds and networking options, but the thing they don't tell you?

It will sap you of all motivation to do anything not related to the XBox 360. Work is a vector to gain cash to buy more games, pay for acessories or keep the cable modem humming along.

In reality? You're like a junkie, sneaking off from work with a single-minded purpose - to play more XBox.

Sony and Microsoft may be squaring off for what the industry is calling a fight for your living room, to create a system that will handle gaming, music, movies and an assortment of network-based entertainment, but you know who the real loser will be?

The crack trade.

Crack might be addictive and all, but it's not zombie killing, you know?

(Image from XBox.com)

Boom!

I'm watching a half-hour program on the progression of Madden Football to the next-gen consoles and it's getting to be pretty scary.

The horrors and twisted beauty of 300 pounds of meat springing to life combined with every grunt... Yeah, John's got a hard road getting out of bed these days.

Also, there's apparently a plan to hire ex-players and pro wrestlers to come to your house every Sunday and beat the living piss out of you to make the game stick with you all week.

Did you know they're creating animations for blades of grass now?

Or that the audio contains footstep and breathing tracks?

And that they change the sounds of rain depending if you're running or standing?

I was considering picking up a copy now that baseball season is over, but seeing this I can't see how I've managed to live this long without an XBox 360. I mean, really - are you aware of how empty I feel right now?

Considering this game and car commercials are my only connections to popular music these days, I'm pretty much forced to buy this game soon, but the chance to see a fully animated version of David Carr's face as it gets stuffed inside his anus 15 times a game because the Texans management has no business running an NFL team is almost too much to resist.

I can almost smell the virtual Ben-Gay and it's calling my name.

(Photo from MLV.com)

How badass is that?

I needed to pick up a test DVD today so I can watch movies while pretending to work... uh, properly test audio and visual solutions for today and tomorrow. (For the record, I grabbed The Muppets Take Manhattan because it's live-action and contains no curse words. Also, the Swedish Chef is my own personal Jesus, but that's neither here nor there.)

I swung through the video game aisle and couldn't pass on the Warriors game by Rockstar. For those of you who talked to girls before your early-20s, Rockstar makes the Grand Theft Auto series and brand new Bully.

They're one of my favorite companies these days, and I seriously contend that the music snobs of today fighting about Capitol Records versus RCA will fight in 10 years about Rockstar versus Electronic Arts.

I could be wrong.

Anyways, I've only played about a half hour, but so far I've beaten a homeless man, mugged someone, stolen a car radio, broke into a medical supply store and took drugs.

Needless to say, The Girl isn't as excited as I am to have this thing in our house.

Oh, and for the record, I'm going to make the shittiest parent when it comes to parental controls. I'll either have to be a raging hypocrite or hide my super-awesome and ultra-violent games like most guys hide porn.

(Image from: images.tomshardware.com)

Revenge of Mr. Irrelevant

The last man picked in every draft is known by football fans as Mr. Irrelevant.

I'm pretty sure most teams don't even know who they're picking at that point. When I play a Madden season, my last pick is usually the lesser of 12 evils, with two offensive linemen and 10 kickers/punters left over to keep me from seeing the actual bottom of the barrel.

I found this gem today through a links page that took a new spin on the topic.

Enjoy an open letter to John Madden from Ethan Albright, the man rated least talented in Madden: 07.