Turkey Day Prelude

Spending the evening watching them blow shit up on Mythbusters. There's something about watching two guys in SF blow cans up or fire chickens out of a cannon. Hilarious. Frozen chickens will, in fact, go through 12 panes of glass pretty easily. Thawed chickens, not so much.

As promised the other day...

1) What's your favorite game of 2004?
Decisions, decisions. Probably Katamari Damacy. Namco decides to release this simple game for $20 in the States, with one of the best soundtracks I've ever heard. Fun game, the final level is why I like video games in one half-hour experience.

Runner-up will probably be World of Warcraft. But I haven't even purchased it, so I dunno for sure.

2) What's your favorite game-related moment of 2004?
Finally getting Gamefly. Rent games. If you don't like it, send it back. If you like it, buy it. NetFlix should have that. They do not. Winner: GameFly.

3) What's the worst thing to happen in gaming in 2004?
The continuation of the end-of-year blitz on titles that all publishers do starting in September. Something like 300 games are coming out during this time period. There are probably some great games in there that nobody will see because of the juggernauts like WoW or Halo 2 or Metal Gear Solid 3 or whatever. Who has $2000 to spend on gaming? Not me.

I hate it and they do it every year. Nintendo is going to have the DS take a hit since they're releasing it now for Christmas instead of waiting until they actually have some launch titles to go with the hardware.

Barring that, I would have to say the Lowest Common Denominator shit like The Guy Game or resurrecting Leisure Suit Larry only with zero gameplay, just T&A. This is why Acclaim went bankrupt, folks. They rode BMX XXX into Chapter 13.

4) What's your most fervent hope for gaming in 2005?
Fewer sequels. More original titles. That I don't spend all of my waking time thinking or play World of WarCraft.

5) What aspect of games in 2005 are you most looking forward to?
Better connectivity for me, as we're getting DSL real soon now. They just hooked up the phone line today. For the industry, I'd like to see people follow the example of Katamari Damacy. Publish original stuff, instead of cookie-cutter sequels.

6) What's your worst fear for gaming in 2005?
Idiots who confuse gaming with real life and start calling for censorship in stuff like GTA: San Andreas. We are moving towards a nanny society and I am already sick and tired of conservative religious nuts pushing their points of view on me.

I am also afraid of the Hello Kitty MMORPG. Unless it's the Warhammer 40K version of Hello Kitty, where in the grim future of Hello Kitty, there is only war.

I leave you with the only Thanksgiving song worth singing.

We gather together
To watch cheesy movies
At Comedy Central
On Thanksgiving Day

We're Mystery Science
Theater 3000
It's thirty straight hours
And it's called Turkey Day...

Oh, and these words from Crow T. Robot:

Turkey has enough l-tryptophan in it to knock you on your sorry Thanksgiving ass.

Happy Thanksgiving.