Aaaaand, we're back!

It's been a while since I could go into this weekly update without wondering how I was going to manage to fill three to four paragraphs with words. And, let me tell you, if you've ever got me wondering how to BS through 300 words of content, then you have found an especially dark void of activity. You're usually lucky if I don't drop 300 words in the description field of a personal check.

For my money, this week, I'm going with Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, because when it comes to creating epic role playing action, I think of Hall of Fame MLB pitchers. All kidding aside, I've been intrigued with this game for a while, and not just because of the Day 1 DLC flap, but really from the moment someone said it was going to be like God of War meets Oblivion. As far as strong pitches for my interest go, that's pretty much the skyrocketing over my bar for success.

I also really want to be interested in Jagged Alliance: Back in Action, but so far I'm just not confident in what I've seen. I love games like X-Com, Fallout Tactics and Silent Storm when done really well, and I'm hopeful that my gut feeling on Jagged Alliance is off base.

As if that weren't enough, The Darkness II comes out for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 this week alongside Resident Evil: Revelations on the 3DS and Gotham City Imposters on XBLA, PSN and PC. So, welcome back video game industry from your too long slumber. Never leave me again!

It’s hard to convey why I care about MMOs to people who don’t.

I would say that the mechanics and gameplay of these games are an acquired taste, but they’re not. No one ever starts from a position of disliking combat-by-number or long hours of grinding collection quests only to come to appreciate all of their subtle joys later. It doesn’t work like that.

Sometimes I feel like being an MMO gamer is a bit like being a smoker. As a former smoker from the mid-nineties, I can tell you from experience no one ever starts or continues smoking because they taste delicious. Or because of all that awesome coughing you get to do. Or the repellent smell. Or the cost. No, you smoke because there is something about it that makes you feel comfortable and internally sustained. That eventually gives way, of course, to the fact that you smoke because you smoke and you can’t stop, but that’s not where it starts. It starts with the odd satisfaction of grass-filled paper perched between your fingers and a calm that rushes into your brain when your lungs fill with what can only be described as a toxic miasma of soot, tar and cancer catalysts.

When I fire up World of WarCraft or The Old Republic or EverQuest 2 or RIFT or any of the dozens of MMOs I’ve played, I get that same kind of rush before I ever hit the auto-attack key or click on the first guy with a question mark over his head. Which is part of the reason why I also am part of a mostly quiet segment of gamers that doesn't want MMOs to change.

It may not be good for me, but there it is.

This week the guys talk about video games and explore some topic or another. This description is amazing because I wasn't on the show and I've been on a plane all day. Hurray!

Stop me when you’ve heard this before: Gamers are up in arms over the copy protection scheme of a major publisher.

The tumult from the latest skirmish between warring gamers and publishers involves Spore, which limits the number of installs permitted to 3 before the user must contact EA to extend their license. Immediately gamers lined up their rhetorical catapults and fired salvo after salvo of familiar, flaming linguistic ballistics, rolling out all the hits: treating customers like criminals, it doesn’t do anything against piracy, boycott EA and so on.

Call it apathy. Call it selling out. Call it whatever you want, but try as I might, I simply can not find any enthusiasm for bubbling up my once white-hot animus. It’s not just that I don’t necessarily see anything extraordinarily troubling about EA’s security measures; it’s also that I just can’t muster the same gamer-rage that once seemed to come so easily. Feeling victimized by every perceived slight just isn't as appealing to me as it used to be.

At 7PM CST tonight we'll be streaming the Conference Call live! Be sure to tune into our Twitch TV channel to catch the feed and participate in the live chat. We'll talk Diablo III beta, gaming preservation and a whole lot more. Promise.

Show is done. Thanks for joining us!

I have had the DOTA2 beta at my disposal and ready to play for some three or four months now, and I’ve played it exactly twice. This is not a badge of misplaced honor, or some kind of self-congratulatory example of restraint. No, the reason I have not played this game is distressingly simple, not to mention more than a little shameful.

Fact is, I’m completely intimidated by it.

And, it’s not alone. There are lots of games that intimidate me, and try as I might to rationalize and logic my way out of this silly trepidation, I can’t get over my hesitation to play certain games. Games like Magic the Gathering Online, Hearts of Iron III, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Demon’s Souls, Team Fortress 2, Dwarf Fortress, League of Legends and a scattering of others. Sometimes they just seem too complex. Other times the community surrounding the game seems too uninviting, most often competing players have been at the game for so long that it all just seems impenetrable from the outside.

And the tragedy, the real shame of it all, is that all of those games above are ones I’d like to learn and get involved in, right up til the moment that I casually look through an online starter guide that talks about how in just five or six months I might begin to understand the fundamentals. Moments like that, I should have a fully functioning and very real ejector seat, because I would pull that rip cord like I was opening a Christmas present from my long-lost billionaire uncle.

The consideration was whether to head back into the Safari Zone for the one or two Pokémon I saw whom I didn’t have in my troupe. However, I was all out of patience with jumping around in a jungle and getting to different spots for the mere chance I’d get the Pokémon of my choice. I wanted to progress! Plus, the zoo-like nature of Fuchsia City was starting to depress me, and make me feel guilty once again.

Taking out my trusty map, I began plotting my course. It looked like Cinnabar Island was my next destination, as the only other one was to fight against the ultimate Pokémon masters, or some such game-like nonsense. Seeing as Cinnabar Island was, well, an island, I figured it was time to break out my HM case and tape the Surf ability disc to Artax’s head for a few minutes until he got the gist of it. For a moment I did contemplate which of my water-based Pokémon would be the one to ferry me across the Swamp of Sa— the sea, but Artax could be the only true fit. Just imagine me, Denis, AKA Leeloo Dallas Multi-Drag, riding across the ocean on a drag-king Horsea’s back.

We headed on south.

Three months ago I, probably like many of you, could not wait for the latest annoying tech fad to fade into the obscurity it so richly seemed to deserve. Part of it is that I have been through this particular fad before, and I recall with clear disdain how silly and short-lived it was the last time. Which is just about exactly how silly and short lived it had been the time before that. And the time before that.

Entertainers have been trying to make 3D work for mainstream audiences in a meaningful way since the early 1950s, and in the intervening decades the 3D fad waxed and waned with the confident regularity of the moon, prune farmers or Robert Downey Jr's career. Every other decade or so each new generation rediscovers the idea and becomes quickly disillusioned with looking like a jackass in a public movie theater.

From the moment I first put on those cardboard glasses back in the dark ages of the eighties with their flimsy one blue and one red lens I knew this was a giant load of nonsense. It was not unlike how I felt the first time I wore an Ocean Pacific shirt, jean jacket or parachute pants, like some shadowy, pop-culture evil trickster was playing an unkind trick on me and my entire generation. So, when at this year's PAX I was handed slightly fancier looking, but no less inconvenient 3D glasses to experience computer gaming in the THIRD DIMENSION, I was entirely prepared to roll my eyes and proclaim the latest attempt just another in a long string of failure.

Tragically and unexpectedly, I loved it.

I tried to play Final Fantasy XIII when it released last year, and I made it a good 15 hours into the game, which is to say I made it about halfway through the tutorial section. After that nearly 2 full work days of effort here is what I can say for certain, Final Fantasy XIII is a game on the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. That's about it.

I can't say it was terrible, but I can't say I enjoyed my time either. I can't really say anything about the story, because as far as I understand it, I had read basically the first few paragraphs of the first chapter, though I again can't say I really cared for what I'd seen up to that point. I suppose I could say that I didn't care for the characters, but honestly I don't remember any of them, except for the vague, nagging sense that there was one character who was basically a young, annoying girl stereotype.

And, now Square-Enix is releasing Final Fantasy XIII-2, which I really don't know whether it is a sequel or an expansion or what. Again, what I can say with relative certainty is that it is a game on the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, and beyond that not much, except that the likelihood that I will ever play it is extraordinarily low.

Which is all to say that I'm giving game of the week to Soul Calibur V.