I don't know what Viva Pinata is trying to tell me, but I've got to say that getting a "Romancing problem" message is one of the more depressing things I've ever seen in a video game.

Also, if you know what's good for you, you'll make nice with Peldon^2 because he's basically the best Pinata sugar daddy ever.

Actually, now that I think about it... the most depressing thing I've ever seen in a video game is a dead crying Raisant that Dastardos won't come take away and is stuck in my garden for the rest of time.

I'm totally going to have to start over.

[video=ISQ7k2Ot5bgJszLc]

When I'm on vacation and unable to talk to you about points, I want you to hear about points from someone else.

Right now, I'm waiting for a PS3.

And for the first time in a very long time, that means I'm actually waiting to get a console, not standing outside amongst the freezing masses.

Still that didn't prevent me and a friend last night from driving around by all the local Best Buys, Targets, Circuit Citys, Wallmarts, and Toys R Uses to watch the people camped out for the PS3.

His plan was to go around and ask "Is this the Wii line?"

I'm jealous though. I love waiting for consoles. I still keep a very special text message on my phone from one Ryan Davis Esq.

Nov 22, 3:40 am: "We ready to line up?"

Yesterday, the luminous Paul Barnett went over to a local line to video tape and give them schwag. The minute he told me of his plan, my mind began to race. Okay, I could finish this project I'm working on and take tomorrow off, and then just come in late on Friday, yeah yeah yeah ...and I don't even really want a PS3.

I just want one, you know?

At 18:33 (my time, and honestly I don't even know what time that is because I can't translate the military), I received a distressing message from GS editor extraordinaire, Stanley:

[18:33] stanley: a moment of silence...the mobile hub on GS is now gone

I looked up and there it was, SPACE on the navigational bar. SPACE where the word MOBILE used to be.

My first reaction was one of "Yippee!", which is unfair given that I got my whole start at GS doing mobile coverage. In fact, if you scrolly scroll all the way down this page and check out "My 'Recent' Reviews", you'll see that I reviewed 123 games at this site, the majority of which were mobile.

Even though I was in the midst of getting a philosophy major at the time (and thus should have been able to write exceedingly well), my first ever review, Pat Cash Pro Tennis is totally cringe-worthy. Go ahead, cringe with me now.

But I love mobile, because it allowed me to cut my teeth on games journalism. Through the good: getting to review some hilariously bad games like Fight Club and Mean Girls Wannabee (why two e's you ask?), and the bad: spending an entire E3 playing only mobile games, talking to only mobile developers, and then writing thousands of mobile previews that nobody really cared about.

Mobile gaming is one of the most fascinating things about the game industry. There are hundreds of companies and thousands of dollars poured into games that are typically poor quality and not even worth the $1.99 you pay to download them. I have to think that most developers are counting on whim purchases, a la TEXT "BLING" to 2552 TO GET THE LATEST 50 CENT RINGTONE, but mobile gaming hasn't caught on the way that ringtones and screensavers have. There are a few successful developers, of course: Glu, Gameloft, Digital Chocolate, and JAMDAT all come to mind, but these are a few names among countless others that I can barely recall.

I tried to reason out mobile gaming in my first ever feature The Hard Cell, but after months of mobile, I never came to peace with it. And so I moved on.

Shortly thereafter, GameSpot's focus on mobile gaming diminished, a move that I think we can all agree is pretty wise. I still continued to get calls and emails from extremely eager mobile developers. It was a little sad, having CEOs of companies write me to ask if I could please preview their next Java fighting game. I didn't have the heart to let them down to their faces, so I just sent them on to Jeff. That's what he's there for, right?

I'm long out of the mobile scene, so perhaps things have changed, but I still can't reason out why there are so many developers. Is it because mobile development is the closest the game industry has to homebrew? Surely Xbox Live Arcade or PC is easier and more lucrative? Or maybe it's just that the platform, one that is already in millions of homes across the country, is just so tempting.

In the meantime, I'm happy to bid my mobile history adieu. It wasn't really for me, but it allowed me the chance to explore other gaming pastures, and for that I'm grateful.

So that settles it.

The PlayStation 3 will not have any kind of achievement system, it's going to be a real hassle to get at launch, and there are no exclusive games worth $700 coming out this year. I can officially declare that I'm not buying one in the foreseeable future.

Of course, I've said that before and been a total liar.

I'm not surprised that I feel the console is too expensive and that there are no good games coming out for it at launch. I've felt that way about every console in the past few generations, and I've still bought them all right away anyway. I can't tell you how many hours I put into ESPN International Track & Field for the PS2, but I can tell you that it was one of my more pitiful gaming moments.

But what does surprise me is how Sony has seemingly done everything it possibly can to alienate its fanbase. From the strange "final hour" addition of Tilty Support™ (Ryan, HotSpot 10/24), to the importing lawsuits in Europe, to reducing the number of units in Japan, I just can't conceive of a batch of stranger moves from a company. This is on top of everything else, from the Killzone 2 fiasco to the disastrous press conference at this year's E3.

All that aside, the thing that boggles the mind the most is Sony's online strategy. Jeff touched on it in the HotSpot (10/24), but if I, personally, were going to release my own console... above all else, I would steal two things from Xbox Live: the unified architecture of the service, and points. And Sony's got neither.

At least the lack of points on both the PS3 and the Wii makes my multiplatform game-buying decision that much easier. Last generation I bought all my multiplatform games on the Xbox too, but for an entirely different reason. I'd say Microsoft's strategy is absolutely brilliant, if I didn't think it was Nintendo who's really the one making all the smartest power plays.


Does it sound like I'm complaining? In actuality, I'm really excited... and already broke.

I bought four PS2 games last month. PS2 games? Really? Without points? I can't tell you what a bummer it was that Bully didn't have any points. It's set up perfectly for them. Sad, how my love of points is tainting the way I feel about games on other systems.

Speaking of which, Mythic's main marketing guru asked me last week if I was aware that I was number 8 in the world on mygamercard.net. I had to tell him that I was only number 8 according to the "Celebrity Leaderboard" (and am now number 10 :/) but it was kind of a special moment. Look ma, points!

Also, I had thought that the points in Madden 07 had been made more difficult than they were last year. In actuality, even though it might take longer, you have to play much less football... so, they're still a ways off from being on the level of Dead Rising points. It's a shame. But then again, I didn't really want to play a lot of football anyway.

Oh yeah, and did I mention that "it's on" again? Yeah, it's on.

It's really a shame that I haven't posted in so long, and I have no excuse. I've been on this site every day since I left. Watching a video review is the perfect thing to do while I'm waiting to download the day's updates to Warhammer. And what about Brad's performance on On the Spot yesterday? I almost cried because it was so beautiful. I'm officially retiring the expression "pulling a Brad".

For those of you who think I've fallen behind in points, just know that after a month of no cable (Comcast hates me), I attempted to stay offline until I passed Jeff... but that's not going to happen anytime soon. I work all the time, and each day I play my 360 less. But I do have more than 17k points. The question is... how many more? *WINK*

Regarding development, someone once asked me if I wanted to make the games I wanted to make, or if I wanted to make money. The answer I gave him was that I wanted to make money so that I could make the games I wanted to make. And I think that satisfied him. But I have to say that the question is upsetting.

This isn't so much a post about my position right now, because I think I'm fortunate to be a part of a company that has some of the best of both worlds, creative vision and success. But it's more about the dissolution of Clover Studio, which hit me like a suckerpunch to the gut yesterday. Anyone who has been following the Okami coverage on GameSpot is undoubtedly aware of my deep burning love for that game, and it seemed like Clover represented something pretty special, a passion to make games of a certain type (dare I say art?) that was funded by one of the biggest gaming powerhouses (and sequel churners) out there. And now it's gone. Let's hope that our dear game industry doesn't make a pattern of this.

This week marks the first week of my job as an employee of EA Mythic working on Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

Though I've, of course, interacted with developers both at GameSpot and when working on the publisher side at Acclaim, I was surprised by how very much there is to learn about the specifics of working at a game company. And it's been really exciting so far.

My job title is "content developer" which is a division of the design department. One of the things I didn't know before is how many different kinds of design positions there are. There are big picture designers who organize how all the game systems are going to work, and there are writers who write the game, and then there are the implementers who actually make them happen. I'm an implementer. So while using other people's guidelines and making sure you're staying true to the IP, you have to kind of figure out scenarios in the game and how you want them to work and how you want people to approach them, and make them good and fun.

This week, aside from learning about tools and filling out paperwork, I've been putting stuff in Warhammer. So far I've put in a bunch of mobs and made them do stuff like walk around and do various animations. I put in a quest and made it work. I've put in spell effects on different objects. After I do each one of these things, I raise my hands in the air and go "OMG I JUST DID THAT LOOK OMG!" because it's really kind of thrilling the first time you see stuff that you put in a game.

So yeah, I feel really fortunate to have been given this opportunity, because it's been a lot of fun so far. I'm really excited to see what comes of all this, and I hope to stick around and talk about it here, although I might spend more time talking about points than anything else, because... well... points are hell of rad!

I had zero expectation and zero hope for Snakes on a Plane. I was seriously expecting to walk out of the movie theatre thinking I had seen the second coming of House of the Dead.

Maybe it was the fact that we rolled about forty strong to the Metreon for the 10 PM showing. Maybe it was the fact that the entire audience was shouting and cheering and hissing throughout the entire thing. Maybe someone in Hollywood finally got a sense of humor about cheesiness. Either way, that's one of the best movies I've seen in a long time. I haven't laughed so hard in ages.

Some of the early reviews are calling it the greatest interactive cinema experience since the Rocky Horror Picture Show. I'll be damned if they aren't right. I know that the Motion Picture Academy probably didn't plan for this, but if there's one way to get people to see movies in the theatre, this is it.

It's sadly poetic that my last feature at GameSpot happens to be about the same game which was the subject of my very first feature at GameSpot (a game that already makes me feel all sentimental anyway), a position that I've held for little more than a year, though sometimes, it feels like I've been here forever.

And the reason it feels like I've been here forever is because this place and the people here are a family to me. They're this amazing group of hard-working, awesome, funny individuals who are passionate and...man... sooooo knowledgeable about video games. As a result, working here was one of the best experiences of my life.

So you have to understand that in order for me to give up this place, I had to be moving on to something incredible. And while I'm not yet ready to say what that is (you'll know soon enough), I will say that I'm really really excited. I mean *really* excited. (Here's a hint: It has to do with video games.)

Thanks to all of you for your support this past year. As great as this job and the people here are, it's the readers that give this website life. It's the readers that kept me going through long hours and tough assignments. And it's going to be exciting to be one again.

Wikipedia's daily featured article yesterday was about the North African country, Libya.

I love their featured articles, because it gives me an excuse to start reading about something completely random, and then something else, and then something else...ad infinitum. But my favorite thing about yesterday's article was the associated image, the Libyan Flag. Which is a green square.



Something about enlarging it, so that I can see it better, just cracks me up. Like... "Oh I get it! It's all green!" Seriously, click it. It's funny.