From today's news story on Sony's half-year financial report:

Though it did not break out Sony Computer Entertainment's earnings, Sony did say that "sales in game business decreased year on year primarily as a result of the appreciation of the yen as well as a decrease in unit sales of PlayStation 2 hardware and software." The company's admission comes just two days after it used the the platform's ninth birthday to declare the PS2 was "showing no signs of slowing down."

-I wish Comedy Central would stop referring to Jeff Dunham as a "stand-up phenomenon." He's a grown man who has puppets tell his crappy jokes for him. I think we as a society toss around words too casually these days, and that is catastrophic.

-"High Tides and Green Grass" is still the best fake guitar song I've played in Rock Band, Guitar Hero, or even Rock Revolution.

-Zombieland is the best zombie movie perhaps since the original Dawn of the Dead. It's gory, it's funny, and it has some things to say when you look at it as a critique of how our tech-driven world of anonymous user names and handles has changed the way we treat each other.

-Uncharted was fantastic, but I think Naughty Dog missed a grand opportunity. There's a portion of the game where you basically replay the opening scene (thank you, fractured chronology storytelling), but it's a little bit different the second time around. And the differences suggest a change in Nathan Drake, as if the intro was the glossy veneer of the character and the reprising scene showed him as more human, or at least a caricature with an extra layer of depth. Unfortunately, in the very next scene, it's right back to the Nathan Drake of old. They could take the character some interesting places, but seem satisfied to have him just toss glib one-liners and be an Indiana Jones wanna-be. Such a shame.

-Have you ever tried to talk someone through the Xbox 360 controller synching process on the phone? It's a lot more complicated than it seems when someone who knows what they're doing is handling it.

-I really hate car commercials, and most commercials that air during football games, for that matter. It breaks my heart to think that the audience to which they appeal is large enough to justify the creation of the ads, much less the purchase of enough air time to show them to millions on a Sunday afternoon. Eat it, Howie Long.

-While we're on the subject, other gaming Web sites may try to attract people with flashy gimmicks and trendy fads, but here at GameSpot, we believe that good old know-how and an honest day's work is what makes a man a man, and anyone who goes to a different site must be some kind of idiot. Or a communist. You're not a communist, are you? Good, then keep reading GameSpot.

-When did they start serving energy drinks on airplanes? It seems like a terrible idea to get people completely wired and then fly them across an ocean in a closed metal tube.

-Have you ever seen The Prodigal Son starring Sammo Hung? You really should. That **** is four stars all the way.

-Next year's release schedule is nuts. Mass Effect 2, Bayonetta, Army of Two: 40th Day, Dark Void, MAG, Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, maybe No More Heroes: Desperate Struggle and Singularity...and that's just January. Next year is going to be ridiculous.

-PSP Go would be much better if Sony gave a **** about it.

-If the Dodgers and Angels meet in a LA-area World Series, I predict a massive earthquake along the lines of the Oakland-San Francisco World Series, and an addendum to MLB rules that prevents California teams from ever facing each other in a World Series ever again.

--Outside of Metal Gear Solid 4, Braid, and Williams Pinball, last year was a pretty big disappointment for me in terms of gaming. For one reason or another, I expected much much more from Grand Theft Auto IV, Fallout 3, Little Big Planet, and Star Wars: Force Unleashed. Even games I expected to like but not love (Gears of War 2, Fable 2, Mercenaries 2: World in Flames, Guitar Hero World Tour) just didn't seem to grab me.

Not so much this year. Earlier in the year, Infamous and Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars turned out much better than I'd anticipated, and things really kicked up recently. The last month and a half alone has seen The Beatles: Rock Band, Trials HD, Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Batman: Arkham Asylum, and Splosion Man all launch and exceed my expectations. From what I've played of the Xbox 360 Williams Pinball Hall of Fame (in HD with leaderboards and three fantastic extra tables), that's another shoe-in for my personal Best of 2009. Then there's Scribblenauts, which I get more excited about every time I see it.

And there's still potential for a ton of holiday releases to add to the considerable list of 2009 highlights. I could see Demon's Souls, Uncharted 2, Brutal Legend, Borderlands, Half-Minute Hero, Tekken 6, and Assassin's Creed II all being great games, and you've probably got a few more you're surprised to not see mentioned there. And once we get to 2010, there's all that delayed goodness!

I can't for the life of me remember the last time I was this excited by gaming's imminent future. It might have been when the Dreamcast launched.

--Kudos to the Beatles and their families for being a notorious pain in the ass for all licensors when it comes to preserving the band's legacy. You only have to look at the debacle that is Kurt Cobain singing Bon Jovi in Guitar Hero 5 to see why this sort of oversight is necessary.

While it's frustrating to pay extra for their albums and not be able to download anything from iTunes, playing The Beatles: Rock Band makes me realize the upside of all that hands-on concern. No offense to Harmonix, but there's no way this game would be as polished or show as much loving care and attention to detail if the Beatles' rightsholders didn't insist on it. This game is special, and Activision should be embarrassed for churning out its superficial band-specific Guitar Hero mods.

--Speaking of The Beatles: Rock Band, the Xbox 360 edition of the game comes with a code for a free Avatar T-shirt bearing the logo. I need someone to grab that, then get some screens of their Avatar shilling The Beatles: Rock Band on-stage in Guitar Hero 5. This is important, people.

--This week's PlayStation Network update features George Takei as a downloadable character in Pain. When Resident Evil 5 came out, I joked that Capcom should have sold downloadable races so people could customize their game's zombie ethnicities to match their own narrow-minded prejudices. I don't think there's anything wrong with Pain or anything sinister behind the developer's decisions, but I do wonder if a few people might be buying these extra characters for all the wrong reasons.

--The ESRB rated a Data East arcade game collection! WHOOOOOOOO!!!!! I've been waiting for one of these for years. Bad Dudes and Burger Time are confirmed. Now I'm holding out hope for Karate Champ, Fighters History, Two Crude, Bump 'N Jump, Midnight Resistance, Breakthru, Tag Team Wrestling, Lock 'N Chase, Kung Fu Master, Boulder Dash, Ring King, and maybe even the never-released Mortal Kombat rip-off, Tattoo Assassins.

My dream collection would include Captain America and The Avengers and Robocop, but stupid licensing issues will keep those from ever seeing the light of day again, I wager. Bah.

--While we're at it, Konami needs to release a comprehensive arcade collection, primarily for Sunset Riders and the assortment of Gradius-style shooters. But beyond those (and the somewhat moldy titles in Konami Classics Series: Arcade Hits on the DS), there's a ton of interesting-looking titles in the company's arcade past, like Gaiapolis (anime-styled scrolling fighter), Haunted Castle (a sweet-looking arcade installment of Castlevania), Mikie (in which you play a high school vandal breaking property and yelling at teachers), forgotten fighter Martial Champion, and Mystic Warriors (a Sunset Riders-style game with ninjas). (The Simpsons and X-Men games get left off for the same irritating licensing issues mentioned before.)

I don't particularly care if an arcade collection has a bunch of games I remember fondly or even want to play. I love arcades, they're dying, and I want to see and play everything they had to offer while I can. You really don't need to do much to sell me on them. Make sure there's at least two legitimately great titles on there, make sure the emulation is enough to run the games in a playable state (arcade-perfect not a requirement) and beyond that pack in as wide a collection of fodder as you possibly can.

These are like museum pieces to me. I like to watch the evolution of arcade games and the publisher itself unfold as I play through them. I'm fascinated by the miniscule innovations brought to the table by even the most shameless of knock-offs, and by realizing what "classics" never warranted the title while finding obscure gems that deserved better fates.

So Shadow Complex is ticking me off. On the one hand, I'm happy that it's trying to say something. Seriously, I am. We need more developers with the strength of conviction to actually say something. I just really, really hate what Shadow Complex is trying to say, and more precisely, the way it's saying it.

Besides being a shameless rip-off of Uncharted's shameless Indiana Jones rip-off Nathan Drake (from the attitude to the half-tucked shirt to the voice actor), the Shadow Complex protagonist foolishly dislikes the military industrial complex only to realize as soon as his girlfriend is kidnapped that "dad was right" to train him to be a one-man army. It's nice (and convenient!) that the principles of people who don't embrace war are so flimsy as to instantly change at the slighest personal impact of crime.

And then to hear the terrorists talk about how they expect New York and San Francisco to join up with them as soon as they go public... You know, because they're big cities in blue states and not part of the "Real America." The idea is laughable, even by the absurd standards of your run-of-the-mill video game plot. So far, Shadow Complex is more preoccupied with dismissing and insulting other points of view than properly explaining its own. How am I supposed to consider the developer's message when there's no real message to engage with in the first place?

Granted, I'm only about three hours into Shadow Complex. Maybe it'll eventually articulate something a bit more nuanced than "You'll be sorry you don't own a gun when a secret organization of terrorists bent on overthrowing the government kidnaps your girlfriend while you're spelunking."

But hey, baby steps, right? We have to learn to madly smear feces all over the wall before we can paint our masterpiece. And now that we've got that former part out of the way, let's work on the latter.

--I've been playing Marvel vs. Capcom 2 on PS3 a bit. The PS3 friends list/invite system still has nothing on Xbox Live. It seems that there are fewer people out there looking for friendly matches on the PS3, but the ranked competition in my limited experience hasn't been nearly as stiff as on the 360, so this might be a good choice for people who don't want to put up with the same Magneto-Sentinel-Cable crap all day long. I guess the really hardcore MvC2 players didn't want to wait two extra weeks. If anyone wants some, send a PS3 friend invite to Polybren.

--I liked District 9 a fair bit. Not crazy in love with it like some people, but I thought it was very good and I'm glad Blomkamp got to make it instead of a Halo movie. I think I liked it better not knowing much about the plot going in. See it soon to avoid any sort of spoilers.

--Watched Code 46 last night, a sci-fi flick with Tim Robbins and Samantha Morton from a few years back. Not great, but it's probably the best incestuous sci-fi romance since Star Wars. There really isn't that much competition though.

--If I ruled the world, every multiple choice question would be required to have one of the answers be "Kill it with fire." For example:

Bobby has six apples. If he gives Suzy two apples, how many apples does Bobby have left?

A) Two apples.

B) Six apples.

C) Four apples.

D) Kill it with fire.

--Trials HD relies upon two skills: levelling the bike out to match the slope of the ground below (Excitebike-style), and understanding the physics of climbing a sheer surface with a rear-wheel driven vehicle. The first of those things is fun, the second less so. Still, the nearly instantaneous restarts and rag-doll rewards for failure make the game worth a purchase anyway.

--Looks like next week's HotSpot will have a substitute host. After nearly a year of hosting and producing every show, I'm eager to enjoy the show as a listener instead of a participant.

--I'm really excited about the possibilities for Rock Band Network. In particular, I'm debating how best to get the HotSpot theme song on there, and wondering if I'm capable of laying out the note tracks needed for it even though I can't drum or sing to save my life.

--I've just started reading The Essential Dr. Strange vol. 1 and had no idea the character was originally Asian. Does anyone know the backstory of why Marvel changed it after just a few appearances?

--It's good to see football on TV again, even if it's just NFL pre-season.

-Marvel vs. Capcom 2 came out this week. It is excellent. The online isn't perfect, but it's perfectly passable. I actually logged in to play a few matches the morning it came out, which was a terrible idea for my ego. I beat the first guy I played in a normal match, then decided to go for the ranked matches and got DESTROYED. At its best, I can vouch for the game's netcode being lag-free because one guy I played against had zero trouble getting me in an infinite combo against the wall with Magneto.

-MvC2 players are their own worst enemies. I doubt this game will foster many new players for the scene because the level of play online (especially in ranked matches) is very high, and the experience of losing to the best is absolutely demoralizing because you never really get a chance to breathe. Right from the start you're swallowing air combos from Magneto and Storm with helper attacks from Sentinel or Dr. Doom.

-August is here and that means the release schedule is finally going to start flowing again. This week is a total blast from the past with G.I. Joe, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Queen games coming out, but then it starts to get interesting the same way it does every year, with Madden NFL. Then there's Trials HD, MvC2 on PS3 (I'll be getting that, too. Add Polybren to your PSN friends list if you want a piece), Shadow Complex, Wolfenstein, Batman, a new Professor Leyton, and Final Fantasy: Dissidia. Then Guitar Hero 5 hits September 1 and it's a breathless sprint to the second week of December full of big releases. Color me stoked.

-So the fourth anniversary of the HotSpot was a couple weeks ago and I completely neglected to mention it on the air. My bad, but I'd like to thank the original crew of Bob Colayco, Greg Kasavin, Jeff Gerstmann, Rich Gallup, former hosts Tor Thorsen and Vinny Caravella, and everyone who's sat in on the show, been interviewed for it, called in, sent e-mail, completed a homework assignment, listened to it, or even uttered "It was so much better when it was just Bob, Greg, Jeff, and Rich." You were all vital in your own way to ensuring the show would last this long. In other milestone news, the coming week's episode will be HotSpot #200.

-I've been reading the DC anthology of the old Haunted Tank comics. It's about a World War II tank that's haunted. A brilliant Confederate Civil War general acts as the tank's guardian angel since the captain of the tank crew is named after him, so they manage to get out of all kinds of nutty scrapes. Very formulaic after the first few issues, but still lots of fun.

-Puzzle Kingdoms for the DS is a fine game. And it's cheap. If you liked Puzzle Quest and don't mind some pretty bad aesthetic choices in the graphics, check it out.

-Back on the fighting game front, BlazBlue finally arrived from GameFly today. I played a little this afternoon and it was pretty not bad. I played as Carl, a little boy with a mannequin sister that he can animate and have fight for him sort of like a ventriloquist's puppet. If you've ever played JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, it's a lot like the character with the psychotic dummy, only you're having to control both at once instead of switch between them. Kevin likes the game a lot, but I doubt I'll get too deep into it. Besides, I've got Marvel vs. Capcom 2 to play at the moment.

-I also just finished Titan Quest: Immortal Throne on Epic difficulty and promptly started right back in on Legendary. It's rare that I beat any game twice, much less one that takes as long to play through as Titan Quest and its expansion. The in-game timer says 3 days and change. It's not quite 100+ hours, but I guess it's enough to put it up there with Disgaea and Giant Gram 2000 in my upper echelon of gaming timesinks.

-Saw a copy of Freedom Force vs. The Third Reich in Half-Price Books today and it made me smile. I guess someone picked it up from Steam and got rid of the physical copy. I hope it finds a good home.

-I like sports, but this is hands-down the worst time of year for them. No hockey, no football, not even any basketball.

-The Street Fighter IV Tournament Edition FightStick is the best product MadCatz has ever made. Yes, even better than those snap-on controller faceplates with the NFL team of your choice, or the Gears of War 2 replacement Xbox 360 faceplates. Ok, it's just a great arcade joystick in its own right. I put a bat top on the joystick, swapped out the square gate for an American-style octagonal one, and it feels like coming home again. It breaks my heart to see arcades going extinct, but at least there's enough people around with fond memories of them that top-of-the-line joysticks like this can get made. I've never been happy with an arcade stick for home systems before this. And if you don't want to blow the money to buy it and mod it to your tastes, the SFIV FightPads are pretty great too.

-I was on a street corner earlier today looking the other way when there was a car crash in the intersection. I think when I was younger, car crashes actually sounded like terrible, traumatic things. This sounded like a collision of Tupperware containers.

I can't believe 2009 is half over. As it stands today, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is my Game of the Year. Never thought that would be the case, and I'm not sold on anything coming out this holiday season dethroning it.

Red Faction: Guerrilla is a new twist on the series for sure. Instead of tearing up the terrain, you're just tearing up the structures on top of it. It's fun, and impressively complex with the physics, but not quite right. Too many structures continue standing long after you'd expect them to topple, and the constant influx of EDF troops makes most of my runs suicide missions, which means I don't get to hang around and pick up salvage. Really cool for what it is, but I doubt it will have any appeal to those who aren't interested in the premise. Also, Mars is kind of a dull environment to set a game in.

Knights in the Nightmare doesn't waste too much time in ramping up the difficulty. I'm only on level 16 or so out of 40-something, and I'm hitting a boss with a pesky habit of gaining hit points every round, no matter how much I beat on him. The problem is I know there are a dozen ways I could optimize my chances, but I'm not clear at all on which one will help the most.

Checked out Big Bang Mini after Mc Shea mentioned it on the last podcast and Watters seconded the recommendation. It's pretty good. Not perfect, and not my favorite DS game ever, but it's up there with Kirby Canvas Curse in that rare list of DS games that actually make integral use of the touch screen. Kudos to Southpeak for releasing it. More people need to check it out.

Went to see Moon for the second time tonight with friends, then followed it up with a screening of Road House at home. Bonus points to anyone who can connect those dots in a meaningful way (other than simply saying that both movies are pure AWESOME).

Finished watching the first six Star Trek films on Blu-ray this weekend. As uneven as they were, at least they all aspired to something. There was ambition there to say something within a pop culture phenomenon. I wish we saw more of that in games.

Just watched an episode from the DVD sets of the early years of Saturday Night Live. I don't think people realize how little the show has changed in the last 30 years. Sure, the topical references change, but the spirit of the show is essentially unchanged, and the "deeper truths" behind many of the skits are the same ones that pop up now. I don't know whether to hail the show for its prophetic, progressive thinking, or lament its inability to affect meaningful societal change. At least the music was usually better back in the day.

Reports today say that former NFL quaterback Steve McNair died in a multiple shooting. I'm beginning to suspect fame is seriously detrimental to your health.

Speaking of which, I never mentioned that Japanese pro wrestling legend Mitsuharu Misawa died last month at the age of 46. By all accounts, he was taking a pretty standard move in the ring when he suddenly went into cardiac arrest. The guy never really cracked a smile that I ever saw, but I watched more than enough tapes of his work to say that he was one of the best in the world. I'd suggest seeking out his numerous All Japan Pro Wrestling matches with Toshiaki Kawada for some of the hardest-hitting, most epic bouts ever endured for the enjoyment of an audience. The guy was a performer and a professional of the highest order. But he's gone now, well before the end of a natural life span. Chalk him up next to Eddie Guerrero, the Benoits, the Von Erichs, Mr. Perfect, Rick Rude, Earthquake, Louie Spicolli, Bam Bam Bigelow, Mike Awesome, Brian Pillman and an obscene number more as people whose early deaths were intertwined with their pro wrestling careers. I used to watch them all the time, but the more unhappy endings I see in the business, the more disgusted I become with every additional tragedy.

Thought about what games I'm most anticipating this holiday season. The Beatles: Rock Band definitely stands out, and I know I'll be buying a-game-a-week once September hits, but it's tough to pick out specific titles I'm stoked for. I don't think much can really excite me like it did in 2007, partly because so much of what's coming out is a sequel to that holiday's killer lineup.

Really nervous about the Chicago Blackhawks' next season. They went out and signed big-time free agent Marian Hossa for 12 years and more than $5 million a year, but it smells like desperation to me. Rather than sign all their young talent, they went out and committed to a salary hog for a dozen years that almost guarantees they won't be able to sign all of their hot young talents when their contracts start coming up next year. I suspect the 2009-2010 season is a sort of do-or-die campaign for the club. If we don't get it next year, it's first- and second-round playoff exits for years to come, with no real hope of a Cup-winning team (see Vancouver, Calgary, New Jersey). Oh well, at least management is trying to field a winner, for once.

The ESRB ratings description site says we have Warner Bros. to blame for this:

1) Are you the new kid in school? Be sure to dress like everyone else, gossip, and be a lackey for more popular kids, or you'll never fit in!

2) Clearly, Meagan Fellers and Kara are total sluts. Let's ostracize them now.

3)What are you doing spending your home room examining and smelling Cindy Bennett's feet?

I don't know what makes me angrier, Warner Bros. exploiting perhaps the ugliest side of teen culture to make a buck, or the fact that there are enough people out there who would play this that they think it's a good investment.It doesn't help that the game is actually targetted toward pre-teens as some sort of twisted wish fulfillment depicting and reinforcing their ideas of how high school is supposed to be. This kind of dreck makes Lord of the Flies seem positively civil by comparison.

I'm pretty sure I'll never use Microsoft's search engine Bing, but I really enjoy the commercials for it.

I just finished watching the first season of Star Trek on Blu-ray, and Kirk's kind of a ****. When faced with a tough moral decision, the guy just drags his heels until some miracle revelation (you might call it deus ex machina) extracts him from having to make the difficult decisions. Way to lead, Captain.

On the other hand, as a journalist (that's right, I said it), I love how the series formula plays so heavily into the Enterprise crew's (and by proxy, the audience's) assumptions. Half of my job is thinking, "Well wait, what if this is actually the case instead of that?" So it's nice to see a TV show that actually trains audiences to always be looking for that underlying explanation beyond the obvious.

I bought a Street Fighter IV Tournament Edition FightStick in anticipation of the Marvel vs. Capcom 2 release, and outfitted it with an octagonal gate and took out two buttons so it feels a little closer to what I'm used to. While I wait for the game's release, I'm putting the stick through its paces playing Street Fighter III: Third Strike from the original Xbox Street Fighter Anniversary Collection (backwards compatible!). The game's got slowdown, but it still plays great and I really wish Capcom would go back to the 2D well one more time.

Prototype hasn't shipped from GameFly yet, so I likely won't be able to speak with first-hand experience about it on next week's HotSpot. HOWEVER, if you want The Legendary Starfy impressions, then it looks like I'm your Huckleberry.

Wait, Ghostbusters is $60 on 360 and PS3? Why did I think it was a budget-priced game? Just because it was a Vivendi title based on a 25-year-old movie?

Indiana Jones and the Staff of Something or Other (It's "Kings," according to the GameSpot database) comes out next week. As a core gamer, I notice that this game is not being advertised in the places I care most about. I have seen TV commercials for the Wii version in the last few days, however. I suspect this game is not meant for me. It makes me miss LucasArts' Last Crusade adventure game, my gateway drug to Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, Sam & Max, etc.

Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Minis March Again!came out on DSi Ware this week. Here's a ProTip, Nintendo: If you want us to get hyped about something, you have to tell us more than a week in advance. And if you absolutely must go with that one-week lead time for word to get out about your game, don't make that week the same week of E3. Like most gamers, I care about way too many other things that week, none of which require me to part with money for quite some time.

There's a lull in game releases I'm interested in for a few weeks. I want to try out Prototype because I think the podcast needs a direct comparison of it and Infamous, but after that, I'm sort of ambivalent about new releases until July. I imagine I'll give a time-consuming role-playing game a chance in that span, but should it be Monster Hunter Freedom Unite on the PSP or Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor on the DS?

I haven't really touched a rhythm game in months, but I'm ridiculously stoked for The Beatles: Rock Band and the Abbey Road downloadable album. Here's hoping it meets a better fate than the full downloadable Who's Next and Nevermind.

Scribblenauts has made me rethink everything I know about the future of AI and games. Clearly, the abundance of possible outcomes has kept RPG-makers in check for years, allowing gamers only a handful of different branching points in their stories. But if the makers of Scribblenauts are insane enough to make a game with a reasonable facsimile for every tangible noun in the dictionary, why shouldn't we expect more from our interactive storytellers (or glorified dungeon masters, if you prefer the term)? Maybe "procedural" is just a codeword for "lazy."

The new Transformers game has multiplayer. Was that really necessary? Also, I like developer Luxoflux based solely off their work on the first True Crime game (Streets of LA). and I wonder why their talents (assuming they haven't moved on to other studios in the meantime) are being squandered on an underpromoted movie-based cash-in. If this game is actually worth a damn, Activision should be promoting it a lot harder. We've seen how well straight-up mediocre movie-based games can sell (Iron Man?), so you'd think someone with something worthwhile on their hands would get the word out a little better.

I never played the original Persona. Does anyone think it will stand up well in remade PSP form later this year?

I really, really hope the Penguins win Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals against the Red Wings on Friday night. Teamwork is one of the core values of hockey, and Marian Hossa turning down a lucrative contract from the Penguins after making the finals last year (and losing to the Red Wings) only to turn around, stab his teammates in the back and sign with the team that beat them (that'd be the Wings) specifically because he wanted to win a Stanley Cup is the most shamelessly selfish, against-all-the-values-hockey-culture-holds-dear, straight up **** move I've seen since Activision sued Double Fine over Brutal Legend. So for the good of the sport, Hossa MUST NOT WIN THE CUP.

That is all.

[UPDATE] The Penguins won the Stanley Cup in a tremendous Game 7 performance, holding on to half of a two-goal lead even after captain Sidney Crosby was knocked out of the game with a knee injury partway through the second period. Thank you, hockey gods, for smiting the heretic.

We probably won't have time for corrections on next week's podcast, so I'd like to get a jump on that by apologizing right now for my comments about Infamous on the May 26 episode. I still stand by them all, but I didn't take enough time before the recording to really get my thoughts in order. As a result, I wound up listing nitpicks and other minor gripes with the game that ultimately hurt my experience, but I neglected to explain the larger issues those problems played into.

Maybe it would help to explain what my expectations were going in. I knew it was an open-world game with super powers, which instantly gave me a handful of important yardsticks against which to measure Infamous. I loved my time with Spider-Man 2, Crackdown, and Sega's Hulk, even though all those games had serious flaws. So after hearing Tom and Shaun lavish nearly unqualified praise on the game for the better part of a week before I'd picked it up for the first time, I expected something that would potentially redefine the open-world action genre. At the least I wanted it to surpass my previous favorites.

Unfortunately, the numerous areas where Infamous surpasses its predecessors are not the areas where I thought they needed improvement. What I found most fun about those other super hero open-world games is the sense of power they convey, the ability to swing around New York treating the skyline like a jungle gym, jumping over small buildings, or bowling a van down a crowded street and watching the world explode in its wake. Infamous has correlates for all of these actions, but they are greatly toned down. Getting around the city works well and is relatively easy, but it isn't especially fast for me, or fun.

And that's a shame, because navigating the world of Infamous is one of the best-executed parts of the game. Climbing buildings isn't as simple as sticking to the surface and running up the wall. You actually have to look for pipes, ledges, ladders, and other handholds in order to scale walls, instead of simply triggering a super power and defying gravity. It's a little like a more interactive and thoughtful version of the climbing in Assassin's Creed.

But where Assassin's Creed was immersive as perhaps the best animated, most cohesive open-world game I've ever played, Infamous' climbing comes in the middle of a game rife with superficial blemishes. Those nitpicks are many, from enemies that get stuck in animation loops or half-embedded in the environment to that awful will-he-make-it-or-won't-he stuttering fall that happens in so many open-world games when the game can't decide if you'll land on a roof feet first or fingertips first.

The way the game reacts to my actions is frequently awkward like this, and it pulls me out of the experience every time something reinforces the fact I'm playing a game. Whether it's the inability to climb a chain link fence, the way some enemy machinegun turrets can be disabled and other can't, or by what logic blowing up random cars for a photo shoot is a moral act that cleans up crime from the streets, it all adds up.

In my favorite open-world games, I have no problem overlooking their faults and getting lost in the game because the moment-to-moment action was so fun. With Infamous, nearly every aspect of the moment-to-moment action has been done better, or at least in a more polished way. There are some great improvements to the open-world formula that will be readily incorporated into future open-world games (in particular, the auto-aim on jumping avoids Tomb Raider-style jumping puzzle frustration), but they aren't improving the things I like best about open-world games.

As I said on the podcast, this is a very good game, and a worthy purchase at full price for any PS3 owner already interested in the game. I hope I made that clear at least, even if the rest of my comments were less articulate than I'd have liked.

HotSpot listener Greg Arnold does it again. Here's his entry for the homework assignment about which gaming character would get his vote for president.

Beauty.

Really guys? Amnesia bullets? This franchise is dead to me.

So in perhaps premature anticipation of a Marvel vs. Capcom 2 re-release announcement, I dusted off the ol' Dreamcast fighter stick and went a few more rounds with the old girl this weekend. The game is phenomenal, even a decade on down the road. I would go so far as to call it my favorite fighting game of all time (Giant Gram 2000's a wrestling game-totally doesn't count).

I've gone over this briefly on the podcast before, but the game is balanced cleverly, if unconventionally. Where most fighting games are balanced such that no individual fighter has too big an advantage on the rest of the roster in one-on-one fights, Marvel vs. Capcom 2's three-on-three fights let the developers balance the game more like a deck of Magic: The Gathering cards.

Every character has a trio of different assist attacks that let them jump into the action when you're controlling one of your other fighters. Assists are an absolutely crucial, near-constant part of the game. They can essentially help customize your best characters and compensate for their inherent weaknesses.

For instance, Zangief's lack of a projectile attack can be somewhat overcome when you can have Cyclops, Cable, Iron Man, or Ice Man in your party just waiting to jump in with a projectile beam attack whenever you need it. Or perhaps you play Ken and love the dragon punch, but hate getting jacked by your opponent whenever you miss because it takes so long to fall back down to the ground and be able to block again. That's when you can call in Dr. Doom to toss a wall of rocks at the opponent before going for the dragon punch, so even if you miss, your opponent is forced to super-jump out of the way, take chip damage by blocking, or take full damage from the rocks. Any of those outcomes gives Ken plenty of time to recover from the dragon punch, or even press the attack with the help of another assist attack.

So in Marvel vs. Capcom 2, characters can be great in the traditional fighting game sense--where they have high hit priority and a variety of strong attacks--or they can be dead weight as a primary fighter, but useful as a helpers. For every team, you pick three characters, and each of them can have one of three different assist attacks. That creates a team dynamic that radically impacts your strategy in battle.

The thing is, when you run into a good Marvel vs. Capcom 2 player, they have a team intended to work a certain way. It's just like a Magic: The Gathering deck that tries to force an opponent to discard cards constantly, or one that contains nothing but tiny monsters in the hopes of chipping people to death before their decks have time to do whatever it is they're designed to do. And just like a Magic deck with a trick you've never seen before, there's a good chance you'll lose to a Marvel vs. Capcom 2 team with a new trick you've never seen before.

But that's where the game really starts, as I see it. Once you see what the other guy does, coming up with a successful counter-team over the course of several rounds is immensely rewarding. If you're getting swarmed by a player who calls in helpers to attack from one side while he jumps to the other to cross you up, then maybe you should put Ryu and his super hurricane kick in the team. When he tries to do the crossover, you trigger the kick, sucking in both the helper and the main fighter and doing damage. If you've got spare juice in the super combo meter, you can combo into two of your teammates' super moves. Because helpers take greatly increased damage when they're assisting in the fight, you can suck away an entire helper's life bar with one well-chosen combo, or at least leave him so depleted that your opponent will think twice before calling him out again.

Depending on the team chosen, the loss of a character (and thus that character's assist attack) dramatically changes the way the match is played. It's as if you could take away Ken's dragon punch in the middle of a Street Fighter II match. All of a sudden, your opponent needs to play that Ken a whole lot differently.

Getting back to the Magic analogy, you also begin to compile a handful of different "decks" that you like to play. There's the well-rounded, above-average team you pick when you have no idea what you'll face next (mine is Guile, Jin, and Gambit), the team you use when you need projectile attacks, the team you use when someone busts out any of the endlessly irritating tournament-level Sentinel-Cable-Dr. Doom-Storm-Magneto-Blackheart combinations, the just-for-fun team of Dan, Servbot, and Roll. If you're a comic or Capcom nerd, maybe you form an Avengers team, a Street Fighter team, the Mega Man crew or an all-mutant beatdown squad for specifically themed fun.

With 56 different characters in the game, and 168 different assist attacks between them, there are plenty of different line-ups and combinations you can throw together for just about any situation. And where Street Fighter IV draws little other than Ken, Ryu, and Akuma fighters in ranking mode who pick the characters they're most familiar with, the diversity of options in MvC2 leads to not only a vast array of what people consider their best teams, but more willingness to throw one or two "sub-prime" characters in to the mix because players can always rely on an anchor character to save the day.

I'm not a tournament-level MvC2 player. But I do love the game, and I've played a helluva lot of it. My knowledge of it goes as deep as my knowledge of virtually any other game. That said, I consider myself a damn fine MvC2 player even though I don't even know all the moves of half the characters. I see new things just about every time I play the game, new ways to compose a complimentary team of fighters and new strategies.

Like Magic: The Gathering, I wouldn't call MvC2 a balanced game. But the balance it does achieve, it achieves in the amazing variety of options it affords the player. Never before have I seen a fighting game with so many different ways to play that it is difficult not to view the game as an expressive experience. There are more tricks, novel strategies, and nooks and crannies to the game than most people will ever have time to fully explore. The way you play the game, the aspects you focus on in your team dynamic, and the strategy you embrace on the way to victory, all can reflect who you are and your approach to problem solving in a way no other fighter can.

Give this game a shot if you haven't already. And don't approach it the way you would a normal fighting game, because it definitely doesn't fit that description.

I swear, the Blackhawks are giving me an ulcer.

EDIT: But on the brighter side, at least I'm not a diehard Sharks fan.

Or one artist's interpretation of it, at any rate:

That's Tom Mc Shea letting his grotesquely injured ankle ooze all over the desk while I stare on disapprovingly and Kevin eats his hat.I guess that doesn't help explain much, does it? Thanks to HotSpot listener Hou Chung for the awesome pic!

So on this week's episode of The HotSpot, Tom Mc Shea speculated as to what Link was using to fuel his train in the GDC trailer for The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks on the DS. Thanks to the miracle of modern technology and the talent of HotSpot listener Greg Arnold, Mc Shea's vision has come to life:

This is one of the most awesome things I've ever seen and my new desktop wallpaper. I salute you, Greg.

http://www.play-asia.com/paOS-13-71-57-49-en-70-3im.html

Oh my. I hope SOMEBODY takes advantage of this.

Here's an intriguing description of Hudson's Help Wanted for the Wii, as pulled from the ESRB's product description site:

This is an action/simulation game in which players search for employment, perform odd jobs (e.g., teacher, nurse, ninja fighter), and spend the money earned trying to save the world from an approaching meteor. Mini-games (jobs) include firefighting, posing in a bodybuilding competition, and punching and kicking a swarm of rival ninjas. One cutscene shows a man floating in space who emits a green flatulence cloud, which is accompanied by a brief sound effect. Another cutscene depicts a blurred (i.e., mosaic censor), beige-colored object hurtling towards earth. While a character describes the image as an "unspeakable" object that might embarrass innocent people, a brief female moaning sound can be heard in the background.

Sounds bizarre. I'm interested, Hudson. Tell me more.

Ok, so Ricardo mentioned this on The HotSpot a couple weeks back:

The official production blog of Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li.

The movie's terrible, as anyone who listens to the show (or happens to be a carbon-based lifeform) knows all too well. The blog lasted for all of four entries. FOUR.You can actuallyfeel the moment the guy writing the thing just couldn't stomach the lies any longer and bailed out. If you've seen the movie, it should providesome hearty laughs/outrage to see the blog shoveling huge piles of BS about its quality.

On Michael Clarke Duncan as Balrog: "After watching the man in action these past few days, I can say with complete confidence that this was truly the role he was born to play."

On Neal McDonough as Bison: "This is actually the 3rd film Neal and I have done together (Walking Tall, and the upcoming Traitor) and I just couldn't think of anybody better to play Bison. He's got the eyes, he's got the look, and trust me, he's going to scare the hell out of you."

On the actors and the action: Klein is showing off his skills with a 9MM daily, (not to mention his ability to be launched by insanely large explosions) while Kristin is doing things you just plain won't believe. She's had some experience with wire work and action on Smallville, but even she's the first to admit she's never done anything like this (few have).

So, so terrible.