Jack the Ripper

I love Telltale, but I typically don't like the season pass for Telltale games for several reasons. Many of their games seem to get the most work and polish done on their first episode, and after that, the episodes are phoned in or rushed out before their complete. There are exceptions to that, like the Monkey Island and Sam and Max series, which is comedy gold across the board from start to finish, but there were quite a few stinker episodes in the Back to the Future and Strong Bad games.

Even though I paid for the full runs of those games, I quit playing them two or three episodes in. Speaking as an OCD completionist who manages to rack up about 10,000 achievement points per year on my 360 alone, it takes a lot to make me give up on a game I've paid for. It's like going out to dinner and having the most delicious appetizer ever, then the main course and dessert are slopped into a bowl from a buffet. I think if Telltale put as much heart and soul into the later episodes in their series as they do the initial one, and just outright ignored whiny fan complaints about release dates, they'd get better numbers on people coming back to progress and finish the story.

That all said, I never gave up on a series as quickly as I did Hector. First off, for the first chapter, what was selling at the time as a 99 cent iOS game, I paid $10 for on Steam. The graphics and audio were not upscaled for the PC release at all, and the game had several CTD and freezing bugs at launch. Besides that, it was vulgar, gross out humor that had none of the charm of other Telltale releases. It definitely seemed like a competent adventure game, but it was like someone found a journal of game ideas Tim Schafer had deliberately thrown away in 2002, and then used it for evil.

Oh, well.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090526/pl_nm/us_usa_guantanamo_1

Wow, big news week for Gitmo. Makes me wonder about the circumstances of Moazzam Begg's capture.

I guess you guys are right, I was totally acting like a fanboy when I said there was nothing particularly iconic in Sony's current repertoire. How could I forget angry chick's really impressive hair physics from Heavenly Sword? Or the Metal Gear crotch grab? Or Nathan Drake's half tucked shirt? Or the giant enemy crabs? Well, consider this my apology, and by the way: http://tinyurl.com/coo9bt

That was fun, but it's kinda weird watching a PS3 character lean so heavily on other company's franchises for gimmicks. Except for Shadow of the Colossus, there really wasn't any other iconic Sony imagery. Maybe because there isn't any? Or maybe he went straight to their 360 library for tools of violence because the only other PS3 titles they had were, like, Flower and... friggin... Rachet'n'Clank? Regardless, well done, you filthy goddamned Belgians!

With Bioware's game coming out, I'm sometimes getting their old republic game and SWG confused. I really need a more blatant way to differentiate between the two Star Wars MMORPGs, so from now on, could you please refer to TOR as "the good one?"

Oh, good, more panels of people standing around talking about diplomacy and protocol instead of fighting with laser swords and laser guns. I hope there's another three pages focusing on the senate's fiscal proposal for the outer rim colonies' education budget! Andie whensa issa da gungans gonna showsie uppa?

Damnit, I need this to be a Ron Perlman movie right the Hell now.

I wonder how this episode of Penny Arcade's RPG will sell compared to the first. I bought episode one immediately because I love the web comic, but it was just absolutely horrible. I couldn't believe how convoluted the real time turn based combat was, and I didn't even have patience for the writing. Maybe I was in a bad mood? I don't know, but I'm curious to find out if a lot of other people gave up on this series after the first outing.

God help us if Tipper Gore sees five minutes of Gears of War.