Apparently a good remedy for strep throat / flu / whatever the hell I have is a good mix of tea, lemon and a shot of Jameson. I had two tonight during Guitar Hero Thursdays at McAleer's, and I feel absolutely fantastic.

Well, no. Not really. But I do feel much better than I did this afternoon. (As usual, Triggy comped me half of my intake... one of these days the guilt is going to catch up to me and I'll feel compelled to leave like a $100 tip. I love that place and its staff.)

So for those of you old enough to drink, drop a shot of Jameson into that cup of tea of yours. It might just cure a sore throat for at least 12 hours.

In the meantime, HL2 Episode 2 continues to be excellent. It's still the best of the Half Life 2 entries I've played, and I regret not completing Half Life 2 and HL2E1 quick enough to have plauyed HL2E2 when everyone else was playing it.

Finally, and very importantly, LISTEN TO EPISODE 119 OF THE PODCAST and FIND OUT IF YOU WON the right to one of my games. Then PM me. Part of you deserving a prize is being cool enough to support us by listening to us!

Last week, one of my coworkers was apparently recovering from strep throat. In addition, my friend Dave called his job to tell them he was sick last Wednesday -- something he almost never does. I saw Dave on Sunday during the premiere of 24 Season 7. So, either I caught whatever nastiness I have from him or I caught it from my coworker. Today, I called in sick, and I should have called in sick yesterday, but I was stubborn and tried to fight it. Not a good choice. So, I'm working from my hotel room. Not that it helps -- multitasking two meetings and data analysis, no matter where it happens, is literally causing me pain.

In any event, I managed to edit and post the podcast (featuring community member Kellymae) late last night. The blurb is up on our website and I'll be updating the RSS feed shortly. If you wrote in, you can find out whether or not she picked you as a winner. In addition, I have a can of Final Fantasy Dissidia potion up for grabs next time. Haven't decided how we will determine a winner though...

Finally, I finished the campaign for Age of Empires: Mythologies. Once I get through some Skirmishes and test my mettle against Hard Mode, I'll perhaps post my first non-Gamespot review in over two years. Perhaps. Depends on my headache. I am really digging how the developers for the DS versions of the Age of Empires games (Backbone for Age of Kings and Griptonite for Mythologies) have successfully turned those games into addictive turn-based strategy titles. It retains the same "feel" of the RTS versions due to the familiar units, settings, powers and structures, yet feels both more manageable and more taxing on the brain than the RTS versions. It makes me wonder what one could do with full-blown PC versions of the turn-based interpretations, given that developers would have a much larger pool of resources to work with. By the way: If anyone comes across a new copy of Age of Mythology for Windows, hit me up...

Anyway, the blurb for TEH PODCATS is below.

=====

We speak with Gamespot community member Kellymae -- veteran gamer and savvy parent -- about the responsibilities of parents have over their gamer children. We also discuss the seismic events surrounding EGM (closed down) and 1up (mad layoffs). This week we also had quite a few listener questions on both topics, and we decided to let Kelly pick a "winner" from these questions (the questions were provided to her before the podcast without revealing who the authors were, so no complaints of Teh Bias, now!) -- whoever wins gets a game from Austin's collection from a list of those that I no longer play (don't think you'd get new stuff that easy). So winner, winner, whoever you are, and you'll have to listen to find out, send us a message either to the mailbag (mailbag AT trigames DOT net) or Austin's Gamespot PM inbox (MrCHUP0N) for a list of eligible games.

Download here.
File size: 65.3 MB
Running time: 2:16:03

Want to be heard? Hit the mailbag - mailbag AT trigames DOT net.
Want previous episodes? Hit the Podcast Homepage.
You can review us on iTunes, while you're at it.
Add us to your RSS reader or iTunes feed! http://trigames.net/rss.xml

As mentioned before, Kellymae is going to guest on episode 119 of our podcast to talk about her contest topic. But, the best thing about the podcasts for us has been answering your quesitons -- and quite frankly, we haven't been getting a whole lot of questions. Don't you want to know why humans have five fingers on each hand!?

In any case, let me sweeten the deal. To borrow from Street Fighter 2's Guile, are you "man enough" to write in and ask a question or leave a comment? Are you "man enough" to want to win something? How about a game right out of my collection (that I no longer play)?

If you write in (mailbag AT trigames DOT net) BEFORE 11AM EST tomorrow (that's Saturday, January 10th, 2009, folks) I'll pool all of the e-mails together, strip the names (she's got a lotta friends on here so, uh, I don't want her playing favorites ;)), and have her pick her favorite question or comment. We'll then hit you back with good news and I'll post a list of games I'm willing to... separate with.

If you don't know what happened earlier this week, now you do.

Though entirely different in nature, the fallout from the sale of 1up by Ziff-Davis to Hearst Publications (read: UGO.com) leaves me with a heavy-hearted sensation similar to the one left by a certain event last year. I put up a rushed editorial on Trigames.NET. I don't know that I'll post it as an editorial here because I don't want to talk too much specifically about another site in an editorial post, but we'll see.

Please feel more than free to send in any questions or comments about the sale and what it means to our mailbag (mailbag AT trigames DOT net). It'll probably be our only news topic for episode 119, for two reasons:

1) It's huge news, and we want to make sure to give it enough time to talk about, because...

b) ...Kellymae will be joining us to talk about the topic she submitted for the contest, that being "Parents' Responsibility Towards Their Gamer Children"... or something that sums up her email to that effect. She propositioned me as both a mother and an avid gamer, and I agreed that she shared a unique perspective on the situation, so prepare to hear the wondrous chef speak on our next episode. We also want to give this topic enough time, especially with a guest in tow.

SEND THE MESSAGE BEFORE 11:00 AM EST, SATURDAY, JANUARY 10th, 2007 (or 2009, which would be better... thanks Bacchus).

Oh yeah, and Pete is on board to guest again. He says that Gameslaves might be making a comeback so look out for that. He demands that I let you know that you can stalk him on his Facebook, so here goes: Pete Vellucci. Two L's, Two C's.

Prizewinners: Please let me know if your prize has gotten to you, whether the message is via PM or a comment on this post. digi_matrix and edubuccaneer have reported to me that they've received their prize. Ideally, that means everyone should have gotten theirs by now, since digi and edu live the farthest from me (though using such simple logic may very well be inadequate :P). So to Supersonic97, MsCortana and Kellymae, did you get your goodies in the mail yet?

Listeners in general: Please let me know whether or not you're able to download episode 117 of the podcast. Dracula68 contacted me to let me know that he was having problems with his iTunes, so I found a bug and (supposedly) fixed the feed, but it's still showing me errors via Zune that I can't decipher. Curiously enough, I can indeed download the episode. For iTunes users, last contact from Drac says that he's still getting an error, and still can't access episode 117. So please let me know what you're seeing, and what platform you use (iTunes, Zune, or plain RSS).

Though this is the first episode of 2009 due to when it's being posted, this is actually the last recorded episode for 2008 -- so hike up your britches and prepare to hear the Trigames.NET Podcast Crew plus Pete from GameSlaves drone on about how our parents supported - or didn't - our hobby! Props to Edubuccaneer for the topic.

Licenses!

Metallicaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah
http://kotaku.com/5110932/metallica-on-guitar-hero-metallica

Hey look! Tony finally gets his double kick-pedal with "Guitar Hero: Metallica"! But I call them "Rock Band" Parties for a reason...
http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2008/12/15/gh-metallica-to-feature-double-kick-drums-harder-difficulty

Ready at Dawn to reconsider PSP development?
http://kotaku.com/5110069/ready-at-dawn-reconsidering-psp-development

Money!

Midway in the Crapper
http://kotaku.com/5111432/midway-to-lay-off-25-of-staff-austin-studio-closing

Sony in the Crapper
http://kotaku.com/5111366/sony-shares-drop-following-underperform-rating

PC Sales
http://kotaku.com/5110853/pc-sales-charts

Is this "iPod Tax" a potentially dangerous precedent?
http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3171941

Hah - EA, advertising agencies and some screwed up thought processes.
http://kotaku.com/5112022/ea-wii-graphics-not-of-broadcast-quality

The Development Dtudio Graveyard welcomes another unfortunate victim.
http://www.gamespot.com/news/blogs/rumor-control/909119209/26714230/free-radical-antioxidized.html?tag=latestheadlines;title;2

Odds and Ends

Phantom!?
http://kotaku.com/5110394/phantom-launches-game-store-readies-upgraded-lapboards

Club Nintend-offline!
http://kotaku.com/5110805/club-nintendo-usa-is-go-err-almost

Worst mom in Britain gets a.... Playstation 3?!
http://kotaku.com/5111375/worst-mom-in-britain-gets-ps3-in-jail

Download here.
File size: 71.6 MB
Running time: 2:29:15

Want to be heard? Hit the mailbag - mailbag AT trigames DOT net.
Want previous episodes? Hit the Podcast Homepage.
You can review us on iTunes, while you're at it.
Add us to your RSS reader or iTunes feed! http://trigames.net/rss.xml

It be 2009. Let's make it a good one. When I rise after noon, and maybe even after 2PM, I will be Calling Duty Four times. Then maybe I'll Live Half in the First Episode.

So my GMATs didn't go so well -- yet again. I aced the Verbal, as usual, but I failed to live up to my stereotype and do better on the math sections. I'm sorry, but I just can't process numbers too well. I swear I'm number-dyslexic (fake made-up and misused term, yes), too -- 3's becomes 8's half the time, and I sometimes see 54 as 45 and vice versa. I'm going to take the test again. I must break 700. But today was unwind day. I literally came home with my head spinning, due all to the test; I walked into the testing center feeling slightly fatigued but otherwise very good, and I walked out with a discombobulated head.

The remedy? I went to the South Street Seaport and had myself some terrible Chinese food. Terrible Chinese food -- in other words, the goop you'd find at mall food courts and airports -- is one of my guilty pleasures. It's mostly disgusting but somehow there's some pep in that fake orange-flavored chicken that I can't resist when I'm feeling agitated. Of course, the regret comes later in the form of a talking stomach...

After that I abused the entirety of my subway ride home by completing a mission in Age of Empires: Mythologies, then continued playing it in bed when I finally got home (around 1:30PM), while watching some of Season 2 of Without A Trace (another guilty pleasure of mine; tons of better shows on television and in my DVD collection, but I still watch it). Naturally I turned off the DS and fell asleep at some point, rising at 6:15 in the evening.

Then after dinner with pops, I plowed through two and a half hours of Call of Duty 4 for a total count of 3.7. Let me tell you, I'm sorry I missed the game back in the day but I'm sure as hell glad that I've gotten into it now. The single player has the same obvious flaws that all Call of Duty games have, but I get sucked into the drama and intensity nonetheless.

I can't wait for the day when Call of Duty starts to adequately mask its forced scripty-ness, just as the Half Life franchise has done since it debuted. For now, though, I'll gladly overlook the poorly-done invisible walls (hello, there's nothing blocking this stream; why can't I follow it? Oh, right, THE MAP ENDS here) and the infinitely spawning enemies.

I think I'm going to end the night with either a night-cap at McAleer's (the Guitar Hero On Thursdays bar) or by actually finishing editing Episode 117 of the podcast. Or maybe both! If you hear really strange, bad edits, you'll know I was under the influence.

Finally, DrFish62 comes to NYC tomorrow, and for the first time I'll be in town to harrass him. Fancy that.

You'd think that me keeping a backlog of all the games I'm currently playing, as well as a set goal for each game, would help me realize how many games I need to finish and how best to go about the task. You'd think that such a document would keep me in line -- "this is the game you are working on, this is how far in it you are, and this is your goal before you can strike it off the backlog, now GET TO IT!"

Like me, you're thinking completely incorrectly. For my backlog, this is a sad, sad thing. Sad Panda.

What I'm about to describe has happened many, many times in the past, so when I say the name of the game I was supposed to be focusing on currently, just realize that said game was once exactly what I'm about to describe.

So, I am "currently supposed to be working on" Dragon Quest IV. I'm in the fourth chapter, during which I guide Meena and Maya on a quest to avenge their father. Despite the amount of focus I've put into my GMAT studies (test is on Monday! watch me SCREW UP), I've managed to play it for just over ten hours thus far, thanks to idle time I have on the subway going place to place. I had a good rhythm going with it. Battles were brisk, so grinding wasn't a huge hassle.

Cut to the day after Christmas, when I went to spend some free money, including a Gamestop gift card that a friend had given me for helping him out on a project. (And Thraxen, before you yell at him, this was just an additional token of his appreciation; his real Christmas gift had nothing to do with gift cards. So calm down.) Aiming to reserve my self-chosen any-store Gift Card from my job's rewards program for other stuff, I decided to limit my videogame purchases to whatever was on the Gamestop card and whatever was left on my EB Edge card, so I kept my shopping to DS games ($30-and-under). One of the things I picked up was Age of Empires: Mythologies (as mentioned in my previous bwog). It was something I had looked forward to when it was announced, and I highly enjoyed Age of Empires: Age of Kings on the DS. I decided to pop it in for a few seconds on the ride home to see if it lived up to its predecessor.

That single ride home has become every subway ride I've taken since. The time count is only a little over an hour, but I'm hopelessly sucked into it. When I go update my backlog sometime later tonight, I'm going to tack this game on it and start charting its progress... which is exactly what I did with Dragon Quest IV when I was in the middle of Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin... which is exactly what I had done with that game when I was in the middle of Half-Life 2 (yes, that game has been a years-long saga for me -- but I did finally finish it!).

Let me not forget to mention that I started a little bit of Call of Duty 4 to see how it'd run on my PC (flawlessly, by the way, with everything at max and 8X AA), which means that once my GMATs are over I will probably supplant World of Goo with CoD4 just because it's "the new thing on my PC".

Or maybe not -- maybe I'll look at my shelf one day and realize, "Hey, I never opened this game," open it up, install it / pop it in my DS slot / PSP slot / load it into my console of choice, and supplant both Age of Empires: Mythologies and Call of Duty 4.

This backlog will. Never. End.

Whether it be Christmakwanzachanukah or the falling snow, I am wishing you'se all a happy whatever. Oddly enough, though my parents are Buddhist and I technically am since I dabble ever so lightly (but I eats meats, so I guess I'm a poser, we "celebrate" Christmas because, I suppose, it seemed to them like the "American thing to do" when they came over here in the late 60's. My sister and I also went to an Episcopal grade school. Go figure.

Anyway, my Christmas haul (including stuff I bought myself with gift cards, marked with an asterisk) has been as follows:

- Crysis

- Without A Trace Season 2

- Dream Theater - "Scenes From A Memory"

- Five Ben Franklins

- A Grilling Pan (Rock Band parties, come forth!)

- Reversible scarf

- adidas mini-duffel bag

- Travel grooming kit

- Civilization Revolution DS*

- Age of Empires: Mythologies DS*

- Yakuza: Japan's Criminal Underworld (omg it's a BOOK)*

- Planet Earth: The Complete Series Blu-Ray (David Attenborough-narrated)*

I'm about to go nuts on Steam. Apparently everything is on sale, between 10 and 75%. I am going to probably nab Call of Duty 4 (still don't have it). After all this time it's still $49.99 for the PC version (and no, I won't play it on any other platform) but Steam has it for $38... *drool*. There are some old games for like, $4 after the discount too...

Two bits of news: First, for you international folk (Digi, Kellymae, Edu) your packages FINALLY WENT OUT TODAY. Second, podcast for this weekend is canceled so we can enjoy our holidays. Episode 117 is in editing but I'm going to admit outright that I'm taking my sweet time. I have GMATs to study for. It also features Pete aka GS Ryvvn from Game Slaves Radio again.

UPDATE: Snagged CoD4 GOTY, Company of Heroes & Opposing Fronts, and Full Spectrum Warrior off of Steam.