UltraMuffin

"Or just buy an automatic weapon." No! It's really hard to rack up combos with automatic weapons since missing a shot resets your multiplier.

And believe me, you want to increase your multiplier in this game. Not just for high scores but because when you reach the highest multiplier, the game shouts "GOREGASM!" in a gruff grindhouse smoker voice and an American flag starts waving in the upper left part of the screen until you screw up. Now that's positive reinforcement!

This game is effing ridiculous.

No no no, I want a NEW House of the Dead: Overkill game, not a remake. The first one was truly fantastic. Short but sweet.

Dear Weather Elitists, I shall tell you the elitiest weather tale to touch your ears and eyes as well as your hearts.

I live in the middle of Alaska. The interior, far from any notion of a temperature-stabalizing ocean (that's right, you can just call me "Busta" from now on). Each year, where I live, it routinely reaches -55 of the most vicious Fahrenheit anti-degrees mankind has ever subjected himself to. I say "mankind", not to be sexist, but to hint at the fact that, if our women were Israelites, the weather that haunts our city brings a perpetual Diaspora inflicted upon the highest layers of North-Earth, leaving behind a wasteland littered with sausage parties and bearded males combing the snowy hills for sustenance. I hunted down my own black angus just yesterday.

Last year, during the Xbox 360 launch, my unemployed friend Drew decided to brave the elements and camp out. It was -25 degrees when his endeavor began. Drew showed up at Fred Meyer (No-Man's Land's interpretation of Walmart) at midnight, intent on waiting there until 8:00am. He invited me, but I declined because I had school and work the next morning, so Clif With A Hole In His Leg joined Drew for this night of devilish nights. We call him Clif With A Hole In His Leg because he has a very literal hole in his right leg... I personally do not know how it got there, but he's not ashamed of it either.

Realizing that he would be sitting in -25 degree weather for eight hours, Drew knew that he would need to bring some space-heaters and extension cords, along with the usual winter apparel, with him to keep him and his comrade alive. Electricity? No problem. Employee parking provides electrical outlets to power car engine block heaters. Realizing that he would, by necessity, have electricity, he decided to bring a power strip and a small 13" TV with him to stay entertained (despite my best efforts, poor Drew still despises books). Realizing that he would have a TV with him, he decided to also bring a Nintendo GameCube and four controllers, and that he would also take the back bench-seat out of his van to have something to sit on. And so Drew, Clif With A Hole In His Leg, and 4 or 5 other people camping out took turns playing Wario Ware and watched Conan O'Brien from midnight till 8:00am in conditions that render all sounds soundless and all smells the scent of a cold, lonesome death.

Drew got his Xbox 360, came home, fell asleep immediately, then woke up and told me all about it, saying, among other things, that camping out for the Xbox 360 was more fun than having one.