Summer is fading fast in the rearview mirror, which means the networks will be trotting out their season premieres soon.  Here’s a quick rundown of what I’ll be keeping my eyes on this season, starting with the returning shows:

Californication – I started watching Californication this summer thanks to Netflix Instant  Streaming, and was hooked pretty quick.  I had caught the first few episodes when it premiered back in 2007, but it didn’t really grab me then (I’m not really sure why not, because it is a terrific show).  I quickly went through the first two seasons, and now sit in wait for more.  David Duchovny plays a writer struggling to come up with anything new, while constantly screwing up his relationships and sleeping with half of L.A.  The third season looks to have him teaching college courses after his latest book flops, while raising his daughter on his own after the mother moves back to New York City.  The third season of Californication will premiere on Sunday, September 27  at 10PM on Showtime

Castle – Nathan Fillion (Firefly, Dr. Horrible) plays a writer who is experiencing a bit of writer’s block after killing off his main character due to boredom with the series.  The first season saw him shadowing a female detective named Kate Beckett (played by Stana Katic), who is serving as the model for the main character in his next chain of novels.  The last season ended with Castle revealing some information to Beckett about the unsolved murder of her mother, and Season 2 looks to pick up with the aftermath of his reveal.  The second season of Castle will premiere on Monday, September 21 at 10PM on ABC.

Chuck – Chuck is my favorite show on TV, so I was glad to see it got picked up for a third season.  In season 2, Chuck found out his father was one of the inventors of the Intersect, and with his Dad’s help, he supposedly had the information removed from his head.  In the season finale, he was voluntarily imprinted with the new replacement Intersect his father had been working on, which gave him some crazy new skills (with an obvious homage to The Matrix with his newly found kung fu skills), in addition to all of the previous information.  I’m concerned for season 3, because as part of the show’s renewal, they cut the budget, meaning less supporting cast.  The third season of Chuck will premiere in March of 2010 on NBC.

Dollhouse - The latest series from Joss Whedon, it follows an underground organization known as The Dollhouse, that is able to imprint personalities directly into peoples brains.   They then rent these folks out for large sums of money, and basically run the most expensive brothel in the world.  Season 1 ended with Echo (Eliza Dushku) escaping from the Dollhouse with Alpha (Alan Tudyk), after FBI Agent Paul Ballard was tricked into helping him break in.  Ballard agrees to help the Dollhouse track down Alpha in exchange for the release of one of their operatives who he had previously been involved with.  Season 2 will also feature glimpses into the future, in the world previewed in the episode “Epitaph One”.  This episode was never aired on TV, and featured Felicia Day as a survivor in an apocolyptic world where the mind-wiping techniques have been modified to be sent via phone lines and radio waves.  The second season of Dollhouse will premiere on Friday, September 25 at 9pm on Fox.

Heroes - Heroes has continued to go downhill, with Season 3 being especially bad.  I can’t remember if I even watched the whole thing.  Regardless, I’ll take in at least a few episodes to see if they can turn things around.  The show has already lost points however, because early rumors have cheerleader Claire (Hayden Panetierre) heading off to college and experimenting with her new roommate (played by Madeline Zima).  Ugh…………while it is sure to get some people excited, if it is true, it is a truly pathetic ratings grab, especially given their 8PM time slot.  The fourth season of Heroes will premiere on Monday, September 21 at 8PM on NBC.

Lost - Lost is another show that has had it’s ups and downs, with season 5 being one of the downers.  When you start heading down the time travelling path, you have to tread carefully otherwise you slip into some of the absurdities that were present in season 5.  Season 6 is said to do away with the time travel, and is also the last season of the series.  Here’s hoping it ends well.  The sixth (and final) season of Lost will premiere in February 2010 on ABC.

So thats about it as far as returning shows goes, so how about some new shows?  These shows will be vying for screen time:

Caprica - Caprica is a prequel to Battlestar Galactica, taking place 50-60 years before the events of the BSG remake.  It looks at the events across the twelve colonies, focusing around the creating of Artificial Intelligence and the Cylons.  I haven’t quite got through the BSG remake, but Caprica is said to not need any knowledge of the BSG universe, and being a prequel, it shouldn’t really have any impact on what BSG I haven’t watched yet.  Caprica will premiere in January 2010 on Syfy.

FlashForward - In the premiere, everyone on earth blacks out for 2 minutes and 17 seconds, and sees glimpses of 6 months in the future.  We don’t know what caused it, or what they saw, but supposedly we will know by the end of the season.  It seems interesting, but my “suckage” radar is going crazy.  We’ll see how this one pans out.  FlashForward will premiere on Thursday, September 24 at 8PM on ABC.

Glee - I don’t know much about this show, just that it revolves around a high school glee club,  and involves multiple musical numbers per show.  All my insticts tell me not to watch, but I’ve heard good things from several people about the show.  Glee premiered on Wednesday, September 9th at 9pm on Fox.

Modern Family – The show centers around Ed O’Neil’s character, the patriarch of an seemingly disfunctional family that includes his son and his partner, his daughter and her husband and kids, and his young trophy wife and her son.  No idea if it will be good, but the previews looked entertaining, and Ed O’Neil makes it worth watching at least an episode or two.  Modern Family premieres on Wednesday, September 23 at 9pm on ABC.

V – Lost’s Elizabeth Mitchell (Thanks Mandrake!) plays an FBI agent who discovers that a race of visiting aliens (Led by Firefly’s Morena Baccarin) are all evil and stuff.  I’ve heard good things about the original V series, and I’m hopeful that this remake wont suck.  It will be a while before we find out though, as V will not premiere until Tuesday, November 3 at 8pm on ABC.

To get it setup, you need to download a small update for the XBox, and then type the code it gives you into a form on the Netflix webpage.  This was a painless process, the update was only a few MB to download, and the account linking went off without a hitch.  After that, any movies in your ‘Instant Queue’ will show up within the Netflix player on the console, with a UI similiar to the ‘Cover View‘ of iTunes.

After you choose an item to watch, the player attempts to determine your connection speed, buffers for about 15 seconds, and your video starts playing.  You’ve got basic controls during playback – pause, fast forward, rewind, skip back/ahead.  All in all, it is a very simple, painless process.

At first, things seemed to be great.  I queued up one of their HD movie selections, and it played through fine.  After the initial success, I queued up a handful of movies and TV shows.  The selection was fairly limited in my opinion – of the 30 or so movies in my regular queue, only 5 of them were available for instant streaming.  Of those five, two were not able to be streamed to the XBox because of licensing issues with Columbia Tristar, a studio owned by Sony.

My ultimate test of the service came over the weekend, with a marathon of the short lived TV series “Jericho“.  I ran into pretty much the same issue as earlier in the week – watching episodes early in the day was fairly painless, but as day turned into night, my connection suffered and soon I was watching episodes barely above YouTube quality.

Now, this isn’t really the fault of Netflix – it is a problem with the internet connection from the cable company, that they don’t have the infrastructure to support the connection they sell you when the entire neighborhood gets online at night.  The problem with this is that they don’t seem to be that great at figuring out your connection speed from the start.

Early in the evening, each episode would start out at 4 bars (out of 4), and about a minute or two in, the video would freeze, and the Netflix screen would popup saying that the connection speed had changed, it would redo its speed test, then buffer a lower quality video.  As the hours got later this would sometimes happen again partway through an episode, and the quality was downgraded to the YouTube quality version. Eventually it got to the point where it was starting at 3 bars, and partway through would drop down.

The 4 bar quality is pretty good, and the 3 bar quality is acceptable.  Any lower than that and it’s not worth it in my opinion.  I only hung in there because I was already pretty far into the series and wanted to see how things ended, but if I were watching a movie, I would have just cancelled it and waited for the actual DVD to come.

Another HUGE drawback is that there is no way to browse the Netflix library on the XBox – you can only watch the titles that you have already added to your instant queue via your PC.  This isn’t a huge deal if you have a computer close by, but it does add another layer to the service that just seems unecessary.

All in all, if you are already an XBL Gold and Netflix subscriber, this costs you nothing extra and is a nice bonus.  If not then, I don’t feel it is really worth it, given the current title selection, potential bandwidth issues, and the inability to browse titles on the console.  Overall, I think Netflix is a good deal, but if you are really only interested in the streaming video, its probably not worth the $8.99 a month for the cheapest plan that offers unlimited streaming.

I will readily admit, I jumped into the game without paying any mind to character creation.  Having been a huge Morrowind and Oblivion fan, I should have known that poor stat/skill selection can really gimp your character.  Because of this, I’ve now restarted the game three times – but I think I’ve got it right this time.

The first thing you do is distribute your 40 stat points in the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats – Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck.  Every stat has a minimum of 1, and a maximum of 10.  Most of these stats affect some aspect of your character, and tie into one or more of the skills you choose.  I’d recommend hitting up this fallout wiki for a breakdown of each stat, how it affects your character, and what skills it increases.  You can also find bobble heads in the game that will increase a particular stat by one point, with there being one bobble head for each stat.

After you select your stats, you end up choosing three skills to “tag”.  Tagging a skill gets you a 15 point bonus to that skill, and you have a total of 13 skills to choose from, like sneaking, bartering, different weapon skills, etc.  You can always increase your other skills with your points as you level, so it may be best to choose skills that will help you the most in the early levels, and leave other skills to increase over time.  You can also find books in the game that will increase your skill levels.

I’ve found that early on, you come across a lot of small weapons, like pistols, rifles, etc, and very few heavy weapons or energy weapons.  Because of this, I took the small weapons skill, and raised my agility to 9, which is the stat that increases small weapons.  Higher agility also gives me more action points to use in the combat system, which is always handy. I chose science and repair as my other two skills.  Both of these skills are increased by intelligence, so I also pumped that to 9, which had the added benefit of giving me more skill points every level.

Science lets me hack into computers, which is useful for hacking terminals to get through locked doors, opening safes, etc.  The hacking mini-game is kind of fun, and is a good exercise in the process of elimination to figure out the password to the computers.  As far as I can tell, the science skill doesn’t make it easier to hack the computers, instead, computers might only be able to be hacked if you have a skill of a certain level.

Repair will let you repair your gear, as well as make new stuff.  Your weapons deteriorate as you use them, lowering their damage, and eventually will break and become unusable.  With the repair skill, you can cannibalize one weapon to repair another weapon of the same type, which raises its condition and damage.  I often find myself over-encumbered, so a good way to reduce my load is by repairing weapons and armor.  You can only repair up to your skill level, so the higher your skill the better.

This combination of skills has served me well so far, and I’ve started pumping points into lockpicking and medicine in order to get myself through the locks that can’t be accessed by hacking terminals, as well as healing myself better.  After that, I’ll probably put some points into heavy weapons, as I anticipate coming across them more as I progress further.  I have come across a missile launcher and a flamethrower already, but ammo is pretty scarce.

The final thing in molding your character are Perks. Every level, you get to choose a perk for your character, and new perks are unlocked every two levels based on your stats.  One of the most important perks is one that gives you an extra three skill points per level, and becomes available at level 4.  This has the potential to give you an extra 75 points over the course of the game, which is HUGE.  There are perks for most skills, which will increase that skill by a certain amount for every rank of the perk you have.  There are others to increase your damage, to find more money, find more ammo, etc etc.

So, in between stats, skills and perks, the amount of control  you have over your character is huge.  As the game goes on and you get more skill points, it will likely become less of an issue as to what you’ve taken, but early on I can definitely feel the difference between a poorly designed character and a well designed one.

So, now that you’ve distrubted your stats, tagged your skills, and maybe planned out those first few perks, it is time to leave the vault and head out into the wasteland. Stay tuned for Part 2 of my review, where I’ll talk about what awaits you once the vault door closes behind you.

I absolutely loved the first game. I thought that it was one of the most unique RPGs I had played. My only complaints were that it was too short and a little too linear. That didn’t stop me from playing it several times. I thought the character development systems that they used were great. Your character’s appearance would change depending on the decisions you made and NPCs would react to you differently based on how you looked or what deeds you were most famous for. You could buy up property and use it to make money from rent or to stash your collections of wives. There was a lot to do and I enjoyed it.

Fable 2 seems very close to being the same game, but in a bigger world. I don’t mind that at all. There are now more factors that determine your character’s appearance. In addition to good/evil we now have thin/fat, corrupt/pure, and young/old. I really want to make a character that just sits in the starting town and does nothing but eat pies. And then maybe occassionally breaks into people’s houses to steal money and then buy more pies.

The collection of melee weapons at your disposal remain unchanged, though now the choice of weapon seems to have more of an impact on your character’s fighting style. Ranged weapons now include guns. The magic system is pretty different. There is no more mana bar; instead, you charge your spells to make them more powerful. Each spell also has a surround mode and a targetted mode. Right now the only spell I have is Time Control. I can use it in surround mode and slow down time, or I can target a specific enemy and use it to sort of teleport to them (similar to the Assassin’s Rush spell in the first game.) So while I’m in combat, I can just tap the B button anytime I want and I’ll cast my Time Control spell at level 1 and slow down time. If I spend my experience points on another level of that spell, then I can still tap the button at any time to cast it at level 1. If I want to cast it at level 2, I need to hold down the button to charge the spell up. The new system makes using magic simpler than the previous game, so I might actually buy more than one spell this time.

In Fable 2 you get a dog. The dog is awesome. Mine doesn’t seem interested in helping me when I’m in a fight. I’m guessing I need to train him to attack my enemies. What he is really good at, though, is finding treasure. Not only will he sniff out chests, but he can also find items that are buried and show me where to dig.

He has found some pretty epic treasure for me so far. I was really excited the first time I heard him bark and saw him pawing at the ground. “Buried treasure!” I exclaimed as I ran to my faithful canine companion with shovel in hand. I dug up the soil in the spot he indicated and I found…

…

A condom! Fable 2 seems to be all about the sexing. There are condoms for sale all over the place, and apparently they’re also buried across the land of Albion as well. Another new addition to Fable 2 is the ability to have children. As a female character you can become pregnant yourself, or as a male you can have a child with your wife. I’m not sure whether or not you have to be married to make a baby. I would be more interested in finding out if the game didn’t also mention STDs.

Players now have the option to buy just about every building they see. You can buy a house and put it up for rent, or you can buy a shop and take a cut of the profits. The nicest thing about this system is that you accumulate money from owned properties even when your Xbox is turned off. There are also jobs you can take to earn extra money such as blacksmithing, bartending, and woodcutting.

I haven’t seen much of the story yet, but it seems quite similar to the first game. Young hero, bad people, terrible tragedy, train to be a badass, etc.

Cooperative play was a feature that had my mouth watering. I haven’t been able to try it yet (locally or over Xbox Live) but after reading about it in the manual, I am less excited. When joining somebody else’s game you are not able to play as your hero! You can only play as a henchman with a predetermined appearance. Experience and gold that the hanchman earns can be transferred to that player’s hero, but the amount of XP and gold that a henchman is able to earn is determined by the person who is controlling the hero.

So that’s all I’ve got for now. I will probably post more as I spend more time playing the game. If I get into it as much as I did with Fable, then I don’t think I’ll be playing anything else for a few weeks.

World of Goo by 2D Boy is a game.  Specifically it’s an independent game that evolved from physics simulations.  In this game you manipulate Goo, which are little blobules of… goo.  You can’t define a word using that same word, but man, what am I supposed to say?  You’ve got these little squeaky, squishy balls of semi-sentient ooze that, somehow, make for a great construction material.  Ostensibly this game is about making your brain explode.  It accomplishes this by employing a creepy art style, adorable and chilling sounds and music, and an ambitious assortment of perplexing puzzles.  Watch the teaser at Amazon‘s page (it’s old timey Tim Burtonesque).

Your guide for the game is the Sign Painter.  Hints for the levels are provided on painted signs throughout the levels, but you’ll want to read them for the humor and wit as much as the puzzle clues.  The goo doesn’t talk, but the Sign Painter doesn’t shut up.  It’s great writing in tiny tidbits.

It’ll take probably 4-8 hours to beat it, depending on how often you fail and how much time you spend screwing around with the physics engine.  Of course you could spend more time in WoG than you did in Liberty City – assuming you want to complete all of the OCD requirements.  OCD = Obsessive Completion Distinction goals.  Whereas you might need to collect 6 goo balls to complete a level, you may need 24 to earn the OCD flag.  Some OCDs are time based, but most require you to perflectly plan and execute a cunning strategy with no mistakes.  Most are fun, almost all are fiendishly difficult.

As you complete levels and collect goo balls you can use them to build a massive tower – competing with players across the globe to see who can make the tallest tower.  Flags, names and heights pepper the sky and you build your tower upward (a la Tower of Goo) so you’ve got some extra stuff to enjoy once the story is done.

I’m being vague about the storyline gameplay because discovering how it works is part of the fun.  They (2D boy) designed it so that you have no idea what’s coming up, which makes it all the more exciting when it arrives.  I may be an anonymous person on the internet, but you can take my word for it: it’ll be thoroughly enjoyable.

I could make a lot of parallels between WoG and Braid, e.g. beautiful and unique visuals, wildly varying gameplay as the levels progress, and a low, low price point!  World of Goo clocks in for $20 at retail and that’s a fair price given the length of the game ($/hr is one way to evaluate).  It’s got all the shine and polish of a mainstream studio game, but with a… stranger story and a lot  more inventiveness. A lot.  The whole thing’s an experiment, which I declare to have been a success.

Official 2D Boy World of Goo site

PreOrder & Buy the game at Amazon (see videos of the goo in action!)

Update: I totally forgot to gift the world with my knowledge of Goo!  2Dboy has already been informed, but I can attest that the ideal input method is the Tablet PC touch screen.  Mice are OK, but you can’t beat the speed of touching the screen itself.  Moving goo is as easy as pointing at it.  Touchpads are horrible.  I have not tested trackballs, sorry.

• The OneUps: I did not see them! My review is awesome!
• Freezepop: As hard in various Harmonix games thru the years, these guys and lady are electro-pop stars, apparently. They had some catchy tunes and chronically misuse the vocal range of the singer lady. Anyway, they got the crowd hopping and could have collapsed the whole building if they tried. The highlight of the show for me was their 1 slow song when they dimmed the lights and employed more melody. The shark microphone was a nice touch for Shark Attack.
• Jonathan Coulton: The headlining act for the night – after a 4 piece hi-NRG electropop act – was a guy with an acoustic guitar and a beard. Poor planning? No; amazing concert beyond reasonable expectation. Despite Penny Arcade’s insistence I had not familiarized myself with his work before PAX. He is awesome and you’re an ass if you don’t hit his site and listen in. My new favourite singer-songwriter (as if I had a previous favorite). Mr Fancy Pants on the Zen Drums was particularly astounding (and he specifically instructed us to write about this on our little blogs) but obviously the highlight of the show/my life was Still Alive feat. Felicia Day. I think his love song from Pluto’s moon to Pluto, post-ex-planethood is a love song that anyone in the solar system can enjoy – he is not simply a geek-rock fellow. As Chuck mentioned, the RickRolled us, even inducing the crowd to beg and plead for the RickRoll to occur (unbeknowst to us). He’s a master.
• Anamanaguchi: We caught the end of their show (including them playing a song w/ video of someone playing AudioSurf to their song). I think they’re entirely instrumental, and they are eminently capable and enjoyable. I think I’ll listen to more of them cuz there’s a severe shortage of quality instrumental rocking out – with real instruments. A guy behind me supposed that the guitar player “just plugged his guitar straight into the Nintendo and used the sound chip to make it sound 8bit”.
• Darkest of the Hillside Thickets: Self described Lovecraftian rock. They were very competent metal players, replete with costumes and ‘tude. I couldn’t understand their lyrics perfectly, but they had some catchy tunes and definitely some performance chops. Not my cup of tea, musically, but an enjoyable show.
• MC Frontalot: This guy is the definition of Trying Too Hard. I do not accept him as the official rapper of my type of people. I hate his flows and I loathe his attitude and attempts at style. Also, his dancing incites me to violence. All this hate (and more!) from a scant few songs that we caught, despite out best efforts to avoid him.
• Minibosses: They had some new songs, they played all the classic classics, no surprises there. As in their studio recordings, their live performance lacks what I’ll call “dynamic range”. Basically everything was cranked to 11, there was no subtlety. That’s fine and all, but I got ear fatigue on top of brain and leg fatigue and didn’t enjoy it for all it was worth. They rocked, as expected!

So that’s my thoughts. I’ll say that Jon Coulton is the person most deserving of widespread respect, adoration and cash moneys. All in all it was a great concert series with a lot of very predictable encores following very brief off-stage stops. The venue itself was large as hell (same room as the Keynote and the Penny Arcade panels; same size as the queue room where thousands and thousands waited in line to enter the exhibit hall) and worked out really well. The sound guys did a great job and the lighting guys were excellent, if a bit slow. I don’t know who ran it but it was a high quality production and the PAX folks should pat themselves on the back.

Now I’ve played through XL and got as far through XL2 as the burned out Xbox in my apartment allowed me to progress and walked away feeling that, despite some minor glitches, some annoying interface choices, as well as some frustrating game play dynamic (anyone who’s played XL with a friend knows how idiotic it was to not allow multiple characters off the bat, and also knows how much being forced into the one-player story progression levels really killed your gaming groove), they were pretty fun games.

Then came Marvel Ultimate Alliance. On the surface it really is nothing more than a more graphically polished version of Raven’s previous titles with a ton of different, if not questionable character choices. Sounds like a win-win situation. Better graphics are always good, and variety is the spice of life, right?

My issue is with where the developers decided to put the polish on the game. This ties in very strongly to Pope’s argument about Soul Calibur IV, and how you should fix core game play flaws before you concern yourself with gimmick characters. While I never saw much of a problem with any of the Soul Calibur games as far as glitches were concerned, XL and XL2 seemed to be riddled with them. From loading failures, to sound issues, to triggered events not triggering, it seemed that some aspects of the games had been overlooked in favor of refining the combat system, changing the menu interface, toying with the leveling system and adding new characters.

The same changes occurred between XL2 and Marvel Ultimate Alliance. They changed some things to make the game less annoying, while still leaving the malfunctioning game engine in place. Potions are gone in favor of a more dynamic health restoring system, leveling can be done either with skill points or with money, and item management is far less hellish than it used to be.

And now will follow a list of things that I really hope they’ve fixed for the release of Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2:

• Don’t make auto assigning skills the default setting for all characters. Nothing is more annoying than switching to a new character only to find a smattering of points assigned to all skills, and not having had a choice in the matter unless you cycled through all the characters at the beginning and turned that option off.
• Fix the sound glitches that cause the music and fx to randomly cut in and out
• Fix the broken triggered events, i.e. if there’s an elevator that you’re supposed to fight enemies on, make it so the enemies spawn and you’re not stuck on an infinitely upward moving elevator that causes you to load your last save. And when you’re fighting a horde of enemies and pick up an item, why do all of the enemies vanish into thin air?
• Remove the ability to fall off levels. Nothing makes me more irate than when a SUPERHERO who can FLY tumbles off the side of a stage while throwing a punch and plummets to his death. Oh, wait, I know what pisses me off more than that – when you’re fucking computer controlled teammates run off the side of the goddamn stage without you having a say in the matter.
• The money system: Money is separated between players, so that they can choose what they want to invest in with their hard earned credits. So why in the hell did player 2 get to spend all of my money when he accessed the options screen? FIX IT.
• Do us a favor and sort out the dialogue screen problems. Player 1 walks up to an item to read it, and Player 2 has to press the buttons to exit the dialogue screen. Make it all Player 1, or make it all Player 2, or make the Player who pressed the action button responsible for the things that follow. The mix and match shit is killing me.
• Tips System? Here’s a fucking tip for you: Tell the player about new features in the game. Maybe the tips eventually tell you that you can form a team that gains reputation points, but I’ll never find out when I’m forced to turn the fucking tips system off because it tells me that I can do a combo by pressing “A A A” every thirty seconds.
• Stat Points. Where the hell did the stat points go? You’re auto-assigning those without even giving the option for the player to do it anymore? I guess being able to stare longingly at the stats screen wishing that your character had more Striking is a lot like being able to actually give your character more striking.

I think that covers most of my priority gripes. I can’t let a game slide when it’s got so many bugs that they leak out of the game and begin to have a ripple effect in the real world. When I was driving home after having played the game on Friday night I stopped at a gas station, and as I pulled up to each pump the display screens all changed from “Insert Credit Card” to “Out of Service.” Of course I still want to finish the game, but Sweet F’ing J I hope they’ve repaired this game for the next iteration.

We headed to the exhibit/showfloor room, and wow. The booths aren’t quite as extravagant as those at E3 ’04, but they are still pretty impressive. We spent about three hours in there playing & watching various games – there is just too much awesome in there to write about, but here are a few highlights:

• Pasty played PMS Missy in a game of quake (The final score: 12 to negative 4), but he at least got a free shirt out of it.
• Free shaves at the Brothers in Arms booth – let them shave and tattoo your head, and get a free copy of the game. We will definitely make pope do this.
• Seeing gabe and tycho walking around – we were standing next to tycho and his kid for a few minutes at the Hothead Games booth, until someone asked him to sign a few books. It was down hill from there, as he got surrounded by people.

We headed out of the show floor a bit after 5pm to head to a panel about writing for games, and on the way, I noticed that Felicia Day was at The Guild’s booth with Sandeep Parikh. I picked up a copy of the guild, chatted with them for a few seconds about stuff (like WoW), and got a picture. Mission accomplished for the weekend.

After that we went to the writing panel which was OK – it was interesting to hear some of the answers from the writer’s perspective. I’ve not much to say about the panel. After the panel, we grabbed dinner at Bayou on First, a cajun / french restaraunt down by the Pike St Market, and it was damn tasty.

We headed back, and got there about 15 minutes before they were going to screen season one of The Guild. We headed to the theater it was in, to see an INSANE line already in place. We figured it was a lost cause, but my adoration for all things felicia day made me get in line anyways. So the line starts moving, and we finally get close and the line stops, and they are only letting people in one or two at a time as they find open seats. Then they say “Only 19 more people are being let in”, and I figured we were doomed. They start counting off people, and its getting up into the teens, and I breathe a sigh of relief – we were #s 17-18-19. Last three people allowed in! Pope however misunderstood his #, and left to go to the concert. It was pretty amusing to watch the guild again, and then the Q&A was entertaining. Felicia Day managed to embarass herself again, much like she did at the Comic-con panel earlier this summer. We also heard about how to get Ron Jeremy to be in your show, the Retarded Policeman, Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine Show, and the Legend of Neil.

We headed off to the concert after that, and got in just in time to see Freezepop. They put on a pretty rocking show, I only knew who they were thanks to Rock Band, but now I guess I could say I am a fan. After that, Jonathan Coulton played, and I wasn’t expecting much – I mean it is just one guy, right. He put on an amazing show, and I am definitely glad we got to check it out. The highlight? A duet of “Still Alive” with FELICIA DAY. Totally fucking awesome. And he rick-rolled us. Twice.

By now it was after 1am (or 4am in real-people time), and we were all exhausted, so we headed back to the hotel to crash. And now we are awake and getting ready for day two. I’ll upload my pictures to flickr laster, but for now enjoy pictures with FELICIA DAY, and a video from pasty’s phone of “Still Alive”. Peace out!

They employ a fairly terrible call center in India for booking flights.  Jessicas, Johns, Jennies one in all.  My English is fairly unintelligible to them.  They apologized often and repeatedly routed me to a ‘specialist’ who was no better equipped to handle the call than the person before.  The final specialist was special in that she had the ability to say “I’m sorry, it doesn’t look like I can help you.”

Confirming the Flight

I was asked to confirm my flight by phone (days after the above fiasco) when the holder of the frequent flier miles booked the flight and needed me to pay the remainder with my credit card.  I was asked to confirm my flight.  I asked for the details of my flight, she said she didn’t know and her question, “Do you want to confirm your flight?”  “Can you tell me the details of the flight before I confirm?”  “I can transfer you to someone who can help you with that.”

Flying (waiting)

I was running a bit late.  I do blame myself, but I didn’t know the consequences would be so high.  My flight was to board at 7am and depart at 7:30am.  I didn’t get to my gate until 7:22am.  The plane was gone.  I was placed on the next flight to Charlotte and was told I was put on standby for the 4:15pm flight to Jacksonville, NC.  When I made my way to the gate for the 4:15pm flight I was informed that I wasn’t on the standby list.  I then put my name on and was 6th in line.  They then announced that they overbooked the flight and they were looking for people to forfeit their seats, they’d be rewarded with a flight voucher and a seat on the next flight to Jacksonville.  The voucher could get you anywhere in the main 48 states or could be used as a $200 credit to fly outside of the 48.  They needed two volunteers, which meant really I was 8th in line.  There was a girl (Amanda) I started hanging out with as she was 2nd in line and didn’t get on.  We killed time together.  She did have a ticket for the 6:20pm flight and I was placed on standby (third in line) over there.  Then things get fun.

Of course the 6:20pm was also overbooked.  Amanda was in zone 3 and tried to get on.  The boarding agent told her to wait.  The 1st in line for standby boarded and the flight left.  Amanda nearly broke down.  The boarding agent was a little annoyed and told her that was the peril of standby.  I told the boarding agent that Amanda had a ticket for that flight, with a seat number and everything.  Boarding agent was confused and looked at the ticket, looked through the computer system.  “Oh, I show that she boarded the 4:15pm flight.”

Should be here noted: Amanda needs anti-seizure medication and epi shots.  She takes the anti-seizure medication daily at about the same time.  Someone from US Airways in Chicago told her she had to check her medicine as it involved needles.  The boarding agent, when pressed, admitted to not knowing where Amanda’s checked bags were (and accordingly her medicine).  Amanda started breaking down the rest of the way as she anticipated having a seizure and having to go to the hospital and missing her 10:30pm flight.  I pushed matters with the agent and Amanda was richly rewarded with a $10 food voucher for the airport.

Amanda called her airport ride/husband who was sure this was all her fault no matter what was said.  I was of the belief that if people who voluntarily give up their seats when they overbook get a free flight voucher, they should probably give one to a person who was forced by US Airways’ mistake to give up their seat.

I got on the 10:30pm flight, so did Amanda, she didn’t have a seizure.

The quickest of reviews on the Jacksonville, NC National Car Rental

When it became clear that I might be later than my 2:30pm reservation for my car rental I notified them that I might be as late as midnight.  The guy responded “As long as planes are still arriving, I’ll still be here.”  I’d been relieved.  When I got off of my plane at 11:30pm and went to retrieve my car National Car Rental was closed.  I called the number and watched the phone at the airport counter ring.  I called the 800 number.  It told me that the help line was open 8am – 10pm seven days a week.

So… I’ll try to avoid US Airways and National Car Rental from here on out.

Soul Calibur 2 was just as good. There were new characters to master, new defensive techniques to learn, prettier graphics, and stages with walls that you could knock people into. This was another game that I spent a lot of time playing, even though I didn’t own it.

I missed Soul Calibur 3. To be honest, I don’t recall hearing much about it.

Yesterday was practically a holiday for me. It was so exciting to get my hands on the next installment of this excellent series. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to spend as much time playing it last night as I would have liked, but I certainly won’t let that stop me from posting my initial feelings of the game today!

First of all, let me just say this: Holy shit… There is a lot of new crap to figure out.

Guard impacts seem to be a bit more effective. I have seen the term “critical finish” a few times, which is a one-hit kill that I have not yet tried to execute. Fighters who block too much can be penalized by having their equipment break. This humorously extends to clothing, so if you ever wanted to see your favorite ladies of Soul Calibur duking it out in their bras and panties, you are in luck. I haven’t quite figured out how all of this stuff works yet. I’ve just been trying to stick to what I know from the previous games, which seems like it will only get me so far. It is nice to see that players who rely heavily on defense will have some more work to do now.

There are a ton of character customization options. You can create new outfits for existing characters or create new fighters of your own. Equipment that you give to your characters can affect their stats. There are also style levels that can be earned to unlock new skills for your characters, though I’m not yet sure what those new skills actually do.

All of the gameplay modes that we’ve come to know and love are still here. I haven’t started the Story Mode yet, but I’m sure it will be epic. Survival mode seems to have been replaced by the Tower of Soul, which you can explore to find new equipment. There is also Xbox Live support, which I am eager to test out.

I did play a few rounds as Yoda. I had my doubts, but he is a fun addition. The Apprentice from The Force Unleashed is also on the character roster. Those guys have an additional force meter to police the use of their force powers. The Apprentice can toss around lightning, and Yoda has some crazy aerial moves. I’m not sure what they’re doing in the game yet. I’m guessing I’ll find out when I start up Story Mode.

Overall, I am very pleased. I can tell that this game will be eating up a lot of time and I don’t mind one bit. The only thing I really have to complain about is a lack of information. A lot of the game’s new features aren’t explained very well in the manual. It took me about 5-10 minutes to figure out how to create a new character due to some poor UI design. I’m sure that a few more hours of playtime will smooth all of that out. It would just be nice to have a little more documentation.