Sorry guys. I just haven’t gotten this shit done. How’s that for a first eh? A Webcomic that just tells you the page isn’t done on time rather than making excuses? I could tell you that there’s been some chaotic upheaval in my personal life and that I’ve been a slackass and let it affect my professionalism, or that I’ve been working on other tasks (moving, commissions, new art pieces) and it’s just eaten up my time, or that I’ve been having horrible writers block and the scripting is slowing me down. But you know what? It doesn’t matter. The end result is the same: comic ain’t done. As bad as I feel about being a slackass, because being a slackass sucks, I’m not pulling my punches on this one. The next quality awesome installment of our epic adventure will be posted as soon as it is done. In the mean time… play some kickball, the comic will be here when you come back.
In other news, I’m going to talk about gaming for a bit. Holy shit! I know! You thought I didn’t do anything but sleep and draw stuff, didn’t you! Ha! Fooled you! I’m something of a gamer, though a casual one at that. Used to be pretty hardcore FPSer back in the days of Day of Defeat. I was killer with my k98 back in highschool. Alas, I’ve gotten slower, and the kids who play those games now keep getting faster, and everything looks to be the same shade of hyper-textured brown to me. You know, when shit ain’t exploding. But I do enjoy me some gaming now and again. I’ve been a stalwart PC purist for a long time now, but despite my stance that your computer is a better gaming machine and far more useful than any entertainment/gaming console the gaming industry has embraced consoles as the heart of it all. Every year more and more excellent games come out for consoles only, and on the rare instance where they’re available for PC as well it is quite obvious that they were meant for consoles. I played Prince of Persia (not the most recent sands of time one, the one before that with the headscarves) on PC and despite it being a mind-blowingly awesome game, the game play was less than stellar because all of the moves were mapped specifically for the xbox. Hell, the PC port was so bad that they didn’t even change the graphics. When those quicktime events came up it’d be all “PRESS A!” and I’d be all “shit! what key is mapped to A? Oh right! Spacebar” but by the time my brain finished that, it’d be too late. So consoles are here to stay. And the way they’re looking it looks like your console will one day be the hub of your household entertainment. It’ll be your media player, replacing DVDs, blu-ray, crystal matrix, whatever, and simply access media content through the great NET. Oh, and you can link your far more useful and multi-purpose computer to it as well. It is the future, I fear.
But something interesting has happened. The Wii came about and it was awesome. Motion control! Sweet! Virtual reality is here and it doesn’t suck! Sorta. The Wii is a great system, I wanted one since they announced it, but really I just can’t think of anything I’m dying to play on the wii. My roommates had a Wii and a 360, and I never played anything Wii-ish. I tried Zelda and didn’t care. Tried Metroid and got bored. Nothing engaged me on the Wii. Ah well, nice attempt, maybe next round. Well now, of course, Microsoft and Sony are trying to get in on that motion-sensitive casual gamer market that the Wii has been printing money off of for the last several years. And you know what? I’m not impressed. Not for gaming anyway. As awesome as it sounds to have you know a “gun” to play your FPS with, point and click and all that, until you make it totally immersive and figure out a decent movement control, it’s gonna suck. Go play yourself some airsoft or paintball, way more fun. And I have to say that while some of the manipulative abilities of the PS move are pretty sweet, the wands you use are some of the goofiest looking things ever. They make wiimotes look hardcore. The 360′s Kinect system I actually have more interest in, because unlike the PS move it actually takes motion sensitive technology to its logical conclusion: remove the controller. Why do you need it anyway, right? If you can make a gesture and have shit happen, why do you need to waggle a remote? Now, I don’t think the Kinect is going to be especially great for gaming. I could be proven wrong, but I don’t think it’ll really catch on. However, for baseline menu control and interacting with the BOX as opposed to the game, I think it has epic potential. Picture this:
You walk into your living room, power on your system, and plop down on your couch. With a swipe of your hand you quickly scroll through your Netflix que, decide there’s nothing new you wanna watch. A quick flick upward and you’ve shifted over to the Xbox live to see who of your gamer buddies are online and to see if that new demo finally downloaded. It did! So a quick verbal “play demo” statement sets it running. You grab your controller and play through some awesomeness for 15 minutes until a message from Frank saying that they’re getting a CoD game going and if you want in. Another quick hand gesture swaps out the focus from the demo you were playing to the chat window. And you voip Frank that you’re ready to go, as you quickly swipe your way through menus to boot up CoD. Or conversely, maybe Frank’s pissed you off and you angrily swipe the chat box off your screen and get back to your demo.
Maybe I’m just too much in love with Tony Stark’s 3D modeling computer, but that sounds pretty awesome to me. Maybe the Kinect can give us the start of that. Maybe not. Time will undoubtedly tell.
