G-pinions

I found this picture floating around the cyberspace:



Apparently, The DS Lite is not just smaller than the original NDS with a brighter screen. That would be too simple. Nintendo actually invented a star-grabbing space ship and collected collapsing Red Dwarfs from around the universe. The DS Lite actually transmits enough energy to keep a rain forest the size of Delaware thriving for sixteen years. It can tan even the most pigment-deficient of albinos. It can make the PSP screen look dull and lifeless.

Am I the only one who's actually a little fearful of this uber-handheld? It's like that one State sketch that no one saw nor remembers but me. A family was so addicted to coffee they would guzzle it straight from the pot - without even adding sugar. The mother would load her children up with dozens of thermoses so they could make it through the school day. It was ridiculous. Then the crazy uncle burst in and said he had invented a new form of coffee that was so powerful they would no longer need to brew 25 pots at one time. So the father takes a sip, remarks "Mmmm, pretty good" and leaves for work. After a few steps, he explodes.

I think the world may be in grave danger if Sony tries to out-bright Nintendo with a PSP revision.

Warning - I've been staring at this picture for the last minute (which, when you think about it, is a really long time to be doing any one thing, let alone staring at a motionless picture) and now I have an uncontrollable urge to buy a white PSP. It looks so cool. Dull screen (ha!) be damned, I'm getting a white PSP before a DS Lite. Do they sell those things in America yet? Anyone want to let me buy their's for $100? I'll even throw in Nick's boring black PSP...

One more thing: if anyone wants to see a direct comparison via the wonders of moving pictures (I'm looking at you Dan. And Scott, of course) I have a few links worthy of your clicking effort. Granted, this doesn't really have anything to do with the original topic of my post (he has the PSP next to him but doesn't do a brightness comparison because he hates albinos), but it's both informative and entertaining. Imagine that. So, enjoy part one first and then hop on over to part two.

I'm quite pleased with the Outfit demo. The game will no doubt be buried in GRAW sales (which Brendan somehow argues don't correlate), and will probably be inferior when all is said and done, but based on the demo it's a pretty great game on its own merits. Ever since the showing I had at E3, and with all previews and marketing since, it was beaten into my head that this game was all about "Destruction on Demand", and balls-to-the-wall nazi-disembowling action. The single-player game may very well be about that (which would be great fun, I don't doubt), but the multiplayer is much more strategic, with equal parts RTS and third-person action/adventure.

In the mode that the demo is defaulted to, you need to capture objective structures (one in your base, one in the enemy's, and one in the middle), and hold them to gain points. There are four more structures as well, which affect the things you can order in for air-dropping - two radios towers (for air strikes and wiretapping the other team's voice chat), an armory (for machine and anti-tank gun emplacements), and a motor pool (for tanks, tanks that spew fire, and all sorts of tanks that shoot ridiculous amounts of rockets). The more you kill and the more you generally kick ass, the more points you attain for ordering fun stuff. You can also order reinforcements, and fix bombed-out bridges and anything else not completely broken.

So that's the basic setup, but choosing which areas to hold and which to airstrike and which to make a run for is really crucial to any sort of success; if you're playing with a couple other people on each team who know what they're doing, the games can go on for quite a while (which is a good thing). Oh, I should also mention that you always spawn with four A.I. soldiers to get your back, man your guns and generally be a pretty smart, useful squad. The games feel much larger than they actually are as a result, since eight humans equals forty in-game bodies. I haven't quite figured out how to command them, but there's a lot to the game I'm still learning. It takes a good ten games before you really see the nature of the game and learn your options, but it gets exponentially better once you do so.

People seem to be bitching about the vehicle controls quite a bit, and it's understandable; they control with a single stick, which is a bit jarring for those who didn't play Mercenaries and are used to daily Halo bouts. I like it though, since it has a sharper learning curve and becomes an asset you need to have on your side in more advanced situations. In general it's the kind of game that will get a lot more intense and deeper the more you play it, more so than a lot of the competition. I'm quite sure I'll be picking it up next week - if I'm having this much fun with one multiplayer map, I can definitely see myself digging an entire campaign, co-op, and full multiplayer privileges. Give it a try.

Check out these PSP ads from London.



White bits? What is this even talking about? It certainly seems dirty, filthy even, but I'm not sure why. It's kind of like when someone licks their lips and says "Limonada." You know children should not listen to such things, but would be hard pressed to explain why it makes you feel so uncomfortable. Needless to say, this ad hardly educates the consumer to what makes the PSP worth buying, which seems to be the whole point of advertising in the first place. All it does is alienate gay males, straight women, and those straight men who are currently without. Notice how I didn't perpetuate the stereotype that gamers don't have girlfriends? I think this may be a historic moment in the history of gaming.

If you think that one is weird than you have severely underestimated how far Sony is willing to go to make me furrow my wonderful brow.



Wait... what? Can this possibly be real? What PSP game even contains scenes of a sexual nature? Is this a common practice from those we used to call overlord? Don't think you're exempt from their tyrannical rule Nick - England has had their hand in every pot. Like a chef who secretly hates his patrons and sticks his dirty fingers in all their food.

I'm in the middle of writing a post that will invariably be more entertaining to the readers of the G, but I feel like I should share this incredible story of nets, a Spaceman, and a place called Brinstar.

I'm back playing Animal Crossing way too much. I'm not sure what specifically drew me back in, but the tremendous community at Penny-Arcade is a huge reason. I can now understand how Nick felt with his Halo 2 clan: just having a huge community of people who love a game makes the experience so much better. Tonight I was visiting Brinstar, a place Eyes5 calls home. It is my town of choice when venturing away from Pancacko. Not only are we both online at similar times, but her town is the most incredible I have ever seen. It has literally 1,000 flowers there; covered from wall to wall with foliage. A sight to behold. As I was walking carefully through her fields - running ruins flowers - I joked that we should play a game of Tag in which the participants walked in a slow-paced chase scene.

After we played around for awhile - hiding in trees and behind houses - we posted in the AC thread to invite two more players to compete. A 20 minute game of tag with a prize being awarded to the winner was organized. And not just any prize: the unorderable Spaceman to the one who could avoid the swing of the net for the longest.

I didn't think the game would be particularly fun, but for some reason it was fantastic. We made a rule that hiding was not allowed, so there was continual, through strategic, movement with a close ear to the microphone for foreign footsteps. In the open field things really picked up. With players moving at the same pace, it was up to cunning moves and feints to avoid the swing of the net. I don't want to brag, but I somehow voided being "It" for almost the whole game, which spanned more than 30 minutes because of lags and new players entering. The rush of adrenaline was severely lacking in the lackadaisical land of Pancacko, but the child's game of Tag has brought a level of excitement I didn't think was possible.

It seems like it's only a matter of time before I tire of this quaint world, but with new insects to catch and games to invent, I may be playing this for a long, long time.