Pop

Yes, what about it.

We need a Frank Miller's Fallout. All women are perpetually naked and buxom, and they're all prostitutes.

I just got back from buying and trying out the Arkham Horror board game. We spent about 4 hours feeling through it (pretty steep learning curve) before we had to split at 4 in the morning, but from the looks of things we weren't going to stop Ithoqua from blowing in and starting ****.

I give them a 45/50 shot at making a decent game. The extra 5 goes to making something approaching the original in quality.

Meh. Most of the other devs have been giving pretty good responses. A few cylinder heads, a lot of people who weren't around for Oblivion.

At least they're not making more movies. I remember the Riddick game being pretty decent.

The Highlander was "good television" in a Beastmaster-on-the-WB kind of way, or a Sci-Fi-non-BSG-original-series kind of way, which is to say, it wasn't good television at all, but exceedingly cheap, poorly written fantasy/sci-fi with a pretty protagonist without acting talent. I knew a guy who lived in a house full of Highlander freaks and they made me watched a few episodes, where they introduced the cabal of mortals who kept track of the Immortals? It was absolutely, irrevocably bad.

Hmmm, I wonder what game that whole abortion thing was from. I don't remember the "salted field" story from any game I've played.

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Gothic Theatre, Denver, 5/17/07. setlist as follows: Took Out a Loan Berlin Spread Your Love Six Barrel Shotgun Weapon of Choice Whatever Happened...? (Punk Song) Window Promise Not What You Wanted 666 Conducer Need Some Air American X Fault Line Devil's Waiting Mercy Love Burns Ain't No Easy Way I'd seen BRMC when they toured behind Howl, which I had no great love for. I was much more excited to see them this time, since Baby 81 is pretty great. The band actually started out pretty poorly. The two openers had some sound problems, which spilled over into BRMC's set and were corrected a few songs in. Robert and Peter's voices didn't carry that well, and there simply wasn't that much energy in the venue at the beginning, during the more up-tempo songs, and those songs need energy to work at their full potential. So it wasn't looking good at first, but when Peter switched over to the piano to play "Window" and "Promise", it started to pick up. I was kind of surprised, because when I went to see BRMC last time, the Howl stuff didn't hit very hard. I was bored by it, frankly. But on the other hand, that concert had more inessential Howl than this one, plus a whole lot of middling fare from Take Them On, On Your Own. This time around the set had only a single song from TTOOYO, and only 3 songs from the self-titled. This setlist had some of the more tolerable Howl tracks and a lot of the fresh and vital new stuff. And it worked, it worked very well. They hit a stride when they got to "Need Some Air", one of the faster tracks off the new album. It was during this song that I thought I realized what that mystery element missing from Howl was - Nick Jago's drumming. It was really, really good tonight. Jago was out of the band when Howl was recorded. At this point I had "Need Some Air" as the possible high point of the night. The band goes through "American X" and Peter does some humorously dramatic tricks with the hoody he has on and tries his best to look like a brooding hooligan. It doesn't work. After this, the band exits the stage, and Robert comes back, stage right, with an acoustic and a harmonica strapped to his neck, Springsteen-style. See, the thing about the BRMC live is that they're a very versatile band. Excluding Nick Jago, the members of the band switch instruments between nearly every song. One song Peter will play bass and Robert will handle the guitar, the next song they're reversed. As referenced earlier, Peter played piano and organ, while Robert played harmonica (simultaneous with guitar) They'll also trade off vocal duties, which ensured that even though both Peter Hayes and Robert Levon Been are chain smokers who like to sing in falsetto, the vocals are strong all the way through the hour and a half set. So like I said, I'm no fan of Howl, and when Robert comes out with his acoustic I know I'm in for at least 15 minutes of pensive folkiness. And I'm getting kinda bummed by this. But he starts playing "Fault Line", and he ****ing nails it. I mean, he ****ing terrorizes that song. He's playing guitar and harmonica at the same time, like two people at once. It sounds stupid, but if you didn't see it you'd think there were two people fully invested and focused upon their instruments playing up there. And the crowd loves it, they do one of those "clap to the beat" things, which doesn't sound good, but it was. They give it the best reaction of the night. I was halfway across the theatre and I got the same feeling I got when Iggy walked up in front of me with his mic in his mouth like a chew toy. So there's a bit of a conundrum - Nick's not playing, and a Howl song is good. I decide that what Howl was missing is a few hundred drunk hipsters and a Robert with a few more years of harmonica practice. Robert plays "Devil's Waiting", and it's good and the crowd gets into it, but I always hated that song. Then Robert leaves and Peter comes on and plays a new track solo. It's a Howl track that got cut, and it sounds like the rest of Howl, but there's no harmonica, and the crowd's good and drunk by this point but it doesn't get nearly as much love as Robert's stuff. Rest of band comes out, plays "Love Burns" and "Ain't No Easy Way", which the crowd is pretty into. Some guy in the front row says it's Robert's birthday, which may or may not be the case, Robert doesn't say, but the crowd still gives a good drunken half of the Happy Birthday Song, in perfect unison. And then the band leaves. Great show. Howl session tracks (previously unreleased) - BRMC - Grind Your Bones BRMC - Steal A Ride BRMC - Wishing Well BRMC - Feel It Now BRMC - Mercy

Tour CDR - BRMC - Grind Your Bones BRMC - Steal A Ride BRMC - Wishing Well BRMC - Feel It Now BRMC - Mercy

TRANSFORMERS MUST DIE Na na na na na na na na Batman.

Eh, it may have been said before, but Koreans like their local MMOs and WoW. There's nowhere near the demand for another MMO then there is for Starcraft 2. That Koreans play MMOs doesn't necessarily mean that announcing an MMO won't take more than a fair amount of hubris from Blizzard, or that Korea won't feel cheated if they don't get Starcraft 2. The Koreans know what they want. They want Johnny Walker Blue. Blizzard can bring them some Johnny Walker Black, which is still pretty damn good, but it might as well be warm piss to Korea. They will settle for nothing less than Blue. Blizzard (hopefully) isn't stupid enough to waste their time with anything other than the goods.

Capital.

Don't forget Deathclaws. I never got to the end of DX:IW. Is it another apocalypse scenario? How are they going to move forward?

ZOMG LOL. Since most people attribute Deus Ex's (is that the proper grammar?) excellence to the specific personalities behind it, can we really be excited about this?

The resemblance is uncanny. If it's not the Oriskany in the game it's at least the conceptual inspiration.

When you turn on the really impressive real time lighting, the performance goes to ****. Otherwise it's fine.

I've been visited by very disturbing visions of a STALKER RTS.

Hehe, as far as I've found, the hardc0re fans, that is, the guys who think Fallout 2 was a professional assassination of Fallout 1, think that New Reno was the only good part of the sequel. But I believe that was mostly about MCA's design choices in regards to roleplaying. I certainly didn't think New Reno was out of setting. I can't remember if New Reno was hit by a nuke, but I'd imagine that if LA hadn't it would have turned out much in the same way, or at least much better than it did. Anyway, we'll have to wait and see.

I don't entirely get what you're saying here. Seemed to me like some of the urban environs, like the Den and New Reno and the Boneyard, consisted of standing prewar building being repurposed by the inhabitants. Denver in Van Buren was going to consist of communities amongst tall buildings. That seems pretty logical to me. Besides, part of the advantage for Bethesda regarding switching coasts is that they have greater freedom to define the environments and the finer points of the physical setting without directly contradicting 1 and 2. Hell, they've practically got Carte Blanche. Isn't that the point? I'm wondering about how it is they're going to fit all the environs in the concept art (if they are) into the game. They've got an obvious enthusiasm for wide open spaces. I mean, if put to scale, DC should be bigger than the entire Oblivion map. Hell, the capital city wasn't bigger than a few city blocks put together. Are they going to cut out large parts of the city and make only certain, smaller parts accessible? If the concept art is any indication, it's going to be hard to wall off the city. I'm thinking maybe they'll feature the Northeastern part of DC and the southwestern part of Baltimore, and throw wilderness in-between. Or maybe it'll just be DC and some surrounding bergs. Fallout just featured the Northern part of LA. *edit- See! See! Heh, wouldn't it be **** we get to visit Bethesda town at some point?

Do you know anything about Virginia Tech? The shooter wasn't bullied, he was a kid with a history of sexual abuse and a mental problem. The oppression he felt was imaginary. If you had the wits you'd cite Columbine, which would be the appropriate example of actual bullying pushing a person to violence.

IIRC, that url has always led to the Blizzard site.

when the child is obviously a nerd.

20 internet dollars says that if the carrier makes it into the game, it will be a dungeon.

So we can reasonably assume it takes place in DC, at least in part.