Command and Conquer Red Alert 2 Co-Op Campaign

You folks all know how much I love RTS games.  I’m really looking forward to Command and Conquer Red Alert 2, but not for the usual reason.  You see, Red Alert 2 will have a co-op campaign.  I just hope it’s amazing.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II Tyranids Announced

Dawn of War 2. Tyranids. Enough Said.

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New Metallica!!! Cyanide

Not sure how many of you guys are Metallica fans, but Metallica pretty much single handedly moved me from listening to Pop Rock in middle school to full fledged Metal in high school. They’re still one of my all time favorite bands, and I just hope the new album “Death Magnetic” is awesome. This live cut is hard to hear, but it’s sounding good so far. (And rumor has it this is one of the “weaker” songs).

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Here’s a higher def version of the audio: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKBy8–Y1Nc/

Star Wars: Force Unleashed – Launch Trailer HD

You know, I don’t really consider myself a fanboy, and particularly not a Star Wars one, at least not anymore. This shit, however, is off the proverbial chain. Assuming most of this is all gameplay stuff, and not just in-game engine cinemas…well…I might need to take a day off work when this comes out.

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The Good, The Bad, and The Weird

I have a thing for Westerns, particularly the Leone-Eastwood Spaghetti Westerns. That being said, this looks truly awesome. I just hope it doesn’t take itself too seriously. I love the blending of genre’s like this though.If you do a youtube search for it, you can find a non-HD version w/ subtitles.

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You CAD

Usually I would simply link to this on Yahtzee’s page, but I’m an internet n00b and don’t know how to link to an article in the middle of the page. This was written by the same dude who does the Zero Punctuation reviews. I personally think Tim Buckley has moments of genuine humor, but generally the comic is hit or miss for me. There’s a reason that in my links to the side, I describe it as the “sitcom” of webcomics. It’s not a compliment, but I think it sums up the strip quite well for me. Harmless, and occasionally interesting or chuckle worthy, but mostly just formulaic and boring.

****

Review this week was Turok, for anyone who didn’t notice. Watch it and let’s all get on with our lives.

As a recent interview with me over at Gamespot and several references in previous reviews and writings may have informed you, I have a long-standing hatred of the webcomic Ctrl-Alt-Del. I thought I’d take a moment to explain it a bit better.

You see, I have this theory that the internet is causing a general mediocritisation of human culture, because you can put pretty much any piece of work on the internet and no matter how hugely it sucks dolphin jizz you’ll find some dick who’s prepared to tell you it’s brilliant. This is the principle on which Deviantart appears to be founded.

But the cruellest thing you can do to an artist is tell them their work is flawless when it isn’t. It gives them no incentive to improve or try new things, which a creative person must always strive to do. And it tends to foster the kind of monstrous egos the webcomic sphere grows like mushrooms in the shit-spattered dark. Tim Buckley of Ctrl-Alt-Del is notorious for having a zero tolerance for any criticism, constructive or otherwise, often deleting it unregarded from his forums, or declaring them invalid for half-baked reasons. It seems blanket praise has already done its damage to this fevered ego.

I don’t hate Buckley. I look at CAD and I see a lot of misdirected potential. I know, that sounds hilarious even to me. But if you look at Buckley’s art blog, you’ll find that he’s actually a pretty decent artist when he wants to be. But the promise of easy praise and popularity keeps him mired in his copy-pasted shoulder-hunched droopy-eyed slack-jawed magnum opus.

Not that copy-pasted art need necessarily ruin a comic – Dinosaur Comics is one of my favourite regular reads. It’s the fact that for having run a gag-a-day strip for however many years, Buckley still has no idea how to structure a joke. I’ve never known an artist so determined to never learn anything about their craft. His usual response to this sort of thing is that he just has his own style and that there’s no such thing as a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ opinion, but the fact is, while humour is a flexible harlot, it still has rules. Rules which can be broken in the right contexts; contexts which don’t include anything Tim Buckley has written.

I’m going to post a link now to a Ctrl-Alt-Del comic from July 2007. Don’t let the fact that it’s old excuse the mistakes; this is still very typical of Buckley’s current work.

http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/comic.php?d=20070718

Here’s another comic, this one a Penny Arcade strip from early the same year. The subject matter and joke are the same (Puzzle Quest) but it’s a fairly obvious joke to make and I can easily assume both writers came up with it independently.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/03/28

Both comics identify the humour in the situation – that the rules of a game world seem absurd when applied to the real world – but while Penny Arcade understands that the crux of a joke should be reserved for the final panel, Ctrl-Alt-Del is apparently so excited about the idea that it blurts it out right away, leaving three more panels to flounder in excessive dialogue and pointlessness.

A punchline should be equated to an actual punch in the face. That’s why it’s called a punch-line. You deliver it and run. You do not hang around explaining how you did the punch and that the recipient should probably be in a lot of pain now.

Identify the funny part of the idea and save it for last. Leave with the audience laughing. If you do nothing else, finish strong. That’s a rule any humourist will agree with. But with the centrepoint of the gag already uselessly spent, Buckley’s comic is forced to fall upon its old standby of violence as a sort of prosthetic punchline. Now, violence can certainly be funny, modern cinema was virtually built on the tradition of slapstick, but it doesn’t work in static, non-animated media. There is humour to be found in shock value, but most people have been on the internet long enough to not be shocked by anything as mundane as a claymore through the sweetbreads.

But even if the joke were structured properly, there is still far too much dialogue. This is a problem common to a lot of webcomics, but since we’re already in the CAD-bashing groove we’ll stick with it. Shakespeare wrote that ‘brevity is the soul of wit’. He did not then add ‘unless you’re writing a webcomic’. It applies to everything, and don’t tell me you’re arrogant enough to claim to know better than Shakespeare.

A gag strip has a very simple formula. Buildup. Buildup. Buildup. Punchline. Anything that does not in some way build towards the punchline can safely be removed. If any dialogue can conceivably be replaced with a gesture or facial expression (visit Perry Bible Fellowship for a crash course in this), do so; this is a comic, a predominantly visual medium, not a fucking essay. Additionally, any dialogue pertaining to either ninjas, pirates, monkeys or Jesus should be excised, sealed in resin and buried in an undersea volcano.

This is why Ctrl-Alt-Del is a blight, and the fact that it remains crushingly popular despite making mistakes that a child would be brutally caned for on their first day at comedy school is one of the main reasons I openly weep tears for the future of human culture.

I know that an opinion can’t technically be wrong and that there could be people who still like CAD for the characters or the art, but if you genuinely think that it is well-written, then you are demonstrably wrong. That’s all there is to it.

Yahtzee is well aware that his own previous webcomic efforts aren’t necessarily any better but reminds you that they came out of a dark time in his life from which he has determinedly moved on without a backward glance

- Yahtzee

Warhammer 40K Recap…by Phil!

So remember when I had all those intentions of writing weekly recaps of our W40K adventures? Turns out those take a lot of time, and I’m still hammering out the GM stuff. Lucky for us, Phil has decided posted up summaries of the past 2 sessions. Fortunatly, he’s a lot better at making these interesting than I am, as my attempt at recap ends up being mired in boring details. Go to Phil’s LJ to discover more! And check back weekly!

Mortal Kombat vs. DC Comics

Yes, you read the title correctly. Yes, it is as stupid as it sounds. Want proof? Click here!

Warhammer 40K: Dark Heresy ***UPDATE***

Tomorrow begins my first attempt at GMing. You can click on the link the side or simply click here to see our W40K page. I don’t plan on updating the main page with our exploits, so you’ll need to check the W40k section weekly for a narration of events, as well as to view character bios and character sheets.

***UPDATE***

I’m still working on my recap of our session last night.  In the meantime, you can always read Phil’s version here on his LJ.

OMG They Gave Guillermo Del Toro A Budget!

So there’s a new trailer for Hellboy 2, and it’s even more kickass than the last one.  Click here!