G-pinions

Those snot-nosed kids at Penny-Arcade really get my goat sometimes. Sure, they provide almost-sure-fire comedic gaming goodness three times a week, were in one way or another the inspiration for this site and are damn generous, but they often wield their power irresponsibly/hypocritically. The source of this temporary ire was a written entry of theirs this week, bitching about the Black demo and saying things such as "after playing the demo I can't imagine any reason to purchase the final game." Considering that the demo is more or less what they showed at E3, in MAY (which they even acknowledge), I think it's a damn impressive showcase of their game design philosophy "gun porn", for those not keeping up with things). But this isn't about what I think.

I used to be an avid reader of their front page, the comic almost secondary; they can be fantastic writers on occasion, and I was often interested to see their take of the current industry issues. Then World of Warcraft came out, and it's never been quite the same since (read: "not boring"). PC games in general in fact - not a hot topic, by and large not very interesting, and not the thing we need to hear one more opinion about (everyone who plays PC games, ahem, also has a PC). Anyhow. I would guess that a good percentage of their readership comes for the comic and doesn't stay for a whole lot else. So when skimming the front page only imparts the knowledge that Black isn't so hot, it's not really fair. They mention that it's just a snapshot of the development cycle, but still get as down on it as possible. if someone were to visit their site on that particular day for the first time, well hey, their comics aren't very funny and they just sit around hocking their merch. Which isn't true at all. All I'm saying is that if they're going to bash in incredibly early demo of a game, they can do it with a little more regard and think about the consequences of passing judgement so hastily. Black doesn't do anything new, but it certainly seems to be reinvigorating the genre a bit. Kind of like that one game they like to mention all the goddamn time.

I don't want to get completely down on them though, as they do link to some quality stuff on occasion. Such as this Dead or Alive 4 review which echoes much of the sentiments that I shared nary a month ago. I thought I was the only who saw through the unforgiving, broken gameplay. A particularly delicious excerpt: "The result is an AI which is utterly frustrating to play against, and which you never feel like you've beaten because you're actually good - you beat it because the CPU rolled the dice and decided to make a completely ridiculous schoolboy error at an opportune moment for you. It's like winning the lottery; you're glad it happened, but under no illusions that you did anything great in the process." Good stuff.