News: Alien Genocide Is Thirsty Work
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Tycho:  I purchased twenty fluid ounces of Halo 3 "Limited Edition Mountain Dew Game Fuel" in the hopes that it would taste so horrible that we'd get a strip out of it. Â Before I read the ingredients in preparation for this post, I often found myself desirous of this strange liquid - a liquid the precise color of tubercular sputum.  I would trip over to Seven Eleven to obtain it, tipping a small portion onto the concrete for the Spartans we lost at Reach.  Once I discovered that the soda contained a compound called "Brominated Vegetable Oil," my ardor was diminished for some reason.  The flavor of the beverage is not unpleasant, especially if you like bromide.  The almost oppressive campaign that surrounds the product is, perhaps, more bitter.   It's one slice (or, perhaps, sip) of a ten hojillion dollar marketing campaign designed to project one of gaming's biggest brands to people who already know about it.  There is no way to escape the Goddamn thing.  Over ninety percent of the surveyed crustaceans were "aware of the launch" and held a "strong desire to purchase," even though their massive claws and aquatic habitat make using the product impossible.  Lemurs are less bullish, but then lemurs are a notoriously tough demo.    It took a third night of playing the Call of Duty 4 Beta for everything to sink in, but it's pretty much official: they know what the fuck they're doing.  A shooter can't merely be great to come out this holiday, and even amazing might be insufficient.  To go against the previously described fucking unstoppable media phalanx - to say nothing of Halo 3 itself, whose multiplayer offering is so broad on every axis that it must be called round - you need to drop something that be off the cheazy.       There are shooters that play with progression to varying degrees.  Battlefield 2142 does, but the infantry experience is one part of a whole.  Rainbow Six: Vegas does, but its reward scheme is largely cosmetic in nature, and takes place outside of the game proper - between rounds, in austere menus.  CoD4's leveling has the sharp inhalation of a WoW ding.  It takes place right there at the moment you earn the XP from a kill, with an onscreen celebration of the fact.  The reward structure earns you new playmodes, new weapons,  new slottable abilities, the right to build custom classes, the right to wear a clan tag.  You don't need to wait long to earn them, the schedule is not cruel, but you need to put in your dues.  It's not an onerous process:  in order to level up, you must simply play Call of Duty 4.  Trust me when I say this is something you will want to do.    I feel as though my knowledge of the game should be richer, so let me crack a few more levels and get back to you.  Hopefully a beta code will have dripped out to you by then, and you will know what I mean with visceral certainty.    Oh, and also: Â if you want to tumble down some fissure in the earth and wake up in the Japanese Madness Caverns, take a look at this video for Puzzle de Harvest Moon.  I watched it hours ago, and I am still haunted.
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Crichton's latest scientific nightmare is full of out-of-control geneticists and their mutant creations. Yawn
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Yoo-hoo! Primitive race here, ripe for conquest/harvest! A pair of noted space thinkers have resigned from an international body in protest at plans to send out powerful radio signals to alien civilisations. The two men feel that the risks of contact with extraterrestrials - who would need to be much more technologically advanced than humanity in order to visit us - have not been adequately considered.â¦
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Since the K5 Emperor of Icecream, eavier, foisted the augean task of ghetto-reviewing onto my skinny shoulders this year, here goes. First, we begin with the grimy w/hole itself, and then move to the individual rotting parts thereof. The obvious changes to the ghetto landscape were: trhurler didn't come back from his hike, MichaelCrawford started giving it away, my kuron brethren were badly trolled by a xanax-popping dysfunctional alcoholic), both Egil and insomnyuk decided to suicidomize themselfs, NIWS/Spellcheckbot attacked (again), and rusty took apart his bathroom and added walls to K5.   Rotting parts inside:
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Shout-outs to MIT. Women eating carbs. The annual Hollywood geekfest known as the Sci-Tech Oscars couldn't be more different from the glitzy main event later this month
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Maybe we've been visited by aliens, and maybe we haven't. Maybe the Majestic 12 exists, and maybe it doesn't. Maybe you'll click on this link, and maybe you won't.
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It's happened yet again - there seems to be a virtual race to attempt/remake/Indianize the same subject by different producers.
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Gabe: Wired has a pretty big article about Penny Arcade in it's latest issue. We've done a lot of interviews but Wired actually sent a writer named Chris Baker out to spend a few days in our office. Sort of like a geek version of Jane Goodall, He hung out with us all day and took notes while we played games and made the comic. Chris interviewed everyone here and even found time to question our wives and friends. Living with us the way he did I think he managed to get some pretty candid stuff out of Tycho and I. Things we might never have divulged during a standard interview. By the end of the week I think we all considered Chris a friend and a valuable addition to any Halo 3 team. The resulting article is a pretty complete look at our little company here as well as the most honest interview I think anyone's ever managed to get out of us. If you're interested you can read it online right here.   -Gabe out
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Tycho: This podcast covers the writing process for today's comic (and a number of other tangents). Of course, it's entirely possible you had already subscribed to the feed and are currently listening to it. In which case, I apologize profusely.   (CW)TB
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Tycho:  Today's comic is based on a story we saw at Kotaku, but when I went over there to verify the link the story had been removed altogether.  For those of you playing along at home, what that means is that Kotaku
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Previously undiscovered lakes under Antarctica may help improve our understanding of the interaction between global warming and the melting icepack. Plus: New climate accord sought. By the Associated Press.
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Tycho: New one's up, for last week's "The Spore Cult." Feed is here. (CW)TB
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The human race is plundering the planet at a pace that outstrips its capacity to support life, according to a report by WWF. The Living Planet Report 2004 shows that humans currently consume 20 per cent more
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It sounds like the plot for a scary B-movie: Germs go into space on a rocket and come back stronger and deadlier than ever. Except, it really happened
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Tycho:  When I started reading articles about Senator Brownback's bill - the one that would require that the ESRB play through games in their entirety - I expected to agree with it in principle, but take issue with its execution.  The shrill phase of the site, where I would don armor and ride under the aegis of the true gamer no matter how mild the incentive, now rests in the reliquary with Xbox Controller Jokes and Jabs At User Friendly.  I had chosen a singularly poor moment to become reasonable.  Upon further examination, the Senator's plan (which I think may be rightly called a machination) is the sort of thing one might forge in the fires of Mount Doom.
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Also: Nasa's Mars rovers--'biggest breakthrough' in science in 2004. [News.com Extra]
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Scientists move swiftly to quash reports that a possible contact has been received from  extraterrestrial life.