You guys miss me? I've been M.I.A. for a while as I worked out some of my issues. I had to work out that whole incarceration thing (I swear to God I never dropped my soap in the shower and you can't prove that I did). Then there was the whole straight jacket incident... yeah, let's not discuss that. But I'm back now. And you know what that means? It means you're going to have to live with my gaming pontification once more. Deal with it; you know you love it.

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Someone out there has to tell me what is with the proliferation of co-dependent video games? I'm going to use two (arguably) excellent games to explain my point: Nintendogs and Animal Crossing: Wild World. I'm going to reserve my judgment on these games for the moment I've actually played them enough to give suitable judgment on them. However, the little I have played begs the question "why do I want to feel as if I have gaming obligations?"

I play video games because I want to, not because I have to. However, with these two games there are time-dependent obligations that must be fulfilled. If one of your neighbors in Animal Crossing tells you to come back tomorrow, they really mean come back tomorrow. If you leave your dog alone for a couple days in Nintendogs, it reacts with such utter sadness and despair that you literally feel guilty.

It's a video game, for pete's sake! It's not even an MMO where I can understand that kind of behavior given that there are real people behind the characters and real relationships are affected by your presence (or lack thereof). However, I do not want to get guilt trips from a polygon puppy who doesn't understand I have bills to pay and women to chase. Ok, so maybe I just have bills to pay. A man can dream can't he? (And if they told you I was stalking them, they're liars, I tell you. Liars!)

The concept of having real-world tangibles such as your voice or the time of day affect your in-game experience is certainly an interesting idea; but I'm not sure how much I'm going to be able to jump on board with it. I don't want to feel obligated to play a video game. The beauty of World of Warcraft was that even with being in a guild I didn't feel obligated to play every day. In fact, there were whole months that went by when I didn't touch it because the real world demanded my attention.

I play video games for one reason alone: because I want to. And unless there's more to this new generation of guilt-tripping video games, I don't think a lot of them will be on any of my top ten lists.

I'd been going out of my skull all week long because one of my close friends live(d) in New Orleans (he's a freelance writer for GameSpot Mobile). Ironically enough, he was supposed to move to Southern California in the middle of September. I tried calling him and emailing him to no avail (understandably so). Then last night he contacted me. He and some of his friends had gotten out just at the start of the storm and he was doing ok.

Then he started telling me stories. Some of his friends had gotten out later than him and showed up at the house where he was staying a day or two after he did... and they inevitably came with horrific stories detailing the decline of human behavior in the region. 80% of the city was under water. Corpses were floating past rooftops. The details he gave me were so much worse than anything I'd envisioned that I can't even repeat them.

I put up a bulletin in the 4th Wall about what you can do to help if you want to. If you have three weeks of your life to give, the Red Cross is offering two days intensive training followed by three week deployment in New Orleans. If I could, I would be there in a second. But there are other ways to help and the first place to start is to contact your local Red Cross or a local church group. I'm an atheist, but this transcends my feelings about God.

The whole week, I've been sitting here in relative ignorance of what's going on down there. I'm pissed off at myself because I didn't fully understand the magnitude and the depth of things going on down there. The news reports are obviously disturbing, but it's a layer of abstraction that allowed me to not be as concerned about it about as I now am. I mean, outside of my own friends, I wasn't too concerned because I was under the mistaken impression that our disaster response would be adequate enough to handle it.

Now I'm less upset with myself, but I'm definitely more upset at what I see as a lack-luster response by the federal government. The media has done a (surprisingly) excellent job of keeping us up to date on the happenings. But the federal government took four days to appropriate funds for disaster relief; they took five days to get the National Guard there in any significant numbers; they took five days to get the airlines to start offering flights to affected residents to places where they could get help; and all Bush can do is go on TV and say something to effect of "it looks bad now, but we'll be stronger after it's over."

I'm telling you, I was not a lover of our President before this disaster. But his lackluster response to a disaster of this magnitude on American soil doesn't have me pissed off at him any more; it just has me completely and utterly disappointed. I disagreed with him on Iraq. But if there was one thing I never doubted it's that somewhere in his warped mind, a part of him thought he was doing the best thing for the country. Emotionally, I was in sync with him when 9/11 happened and in the days surrounding 9/11 he was nothing if not Presidential. During the immediate weeks following 9/11, I was actually proud to have him as our President. I thought about what it would have been like if Gore were in office and I was actually happy that Gore lost the election because I couldn't see Gore speaking to the American people on the emotional level that Bush was.

But now I'm just completely disappointed almost to the point of feeling broken. I was hoping I would have the opportunity to get that feeling back again; that feeling of American pride that was so obviously present in this country post-9/11. It was a feeling that stemmed directly from the leadership of the federal government. But I've been unable to find that feeling during thie crisis because our national leaders are dropping the ball. I listened to the Mayor of New Orleans address the nation on the radio and I've never heard a politician more... I used the word "raw" when speaking with WedgeWu earlier, but I think the word I was searching for was "real". I've never heard a politician more real. And he's nothing if not upset.

Two buildings fall down in New York, thousands dead, and the federal government's response was swift, sure, and decisive. A whole city sinks under the sea like Atlantis and it takes four days, an upset mayor, and corpses floating in between rooftops before the federal government gets the National Guard mobilized in any seriousness.

Before, I just strongly disagreed with Bush; now I'm just fed-up. I'm done with this administration. If you guys see me mouth off about Bush and his policies again remind me I said "I'm done with this administration". I'm done writing about them and I'm done caring about them. I'm just done. My tirade is over.

It's alive!

For a little while now, I've been talking about getting a few people together to put together a union to end all unions! Well this one is it. It's a place of opinion put together by a small group of us, including Oilers99, Adam_B, Andrew_A, and wedgewu. More will most likely be added over the next couple weeks.

What's the idea behind the whole thing? Well to get different members of the community speaking out about what's important to them in gaming. The first week of opinions is on a very tame issue: what gives a game value. Don't worry, it probably won't stay tame for too long... after all, Oilers99 isn't exactly a tame guy.

We will be adding new opinions every weekday (and if we get enough people, eventually every day). There are new features which we're thinking about adding to the mix as well... so this is only beginning. Check back daily (except this week Adam's not available, so he's probably not going to be posting)...

.. and let me know if you're interested in joining up and posting regularly.

As this is my first posting on TV.com, I figured I should give a tribute to the shows I care about that will no longer be with us.

Well, there's only one, really; Star Trek: Enterprise. This will be the first time in almost 30 years where there won't be a Star Trek on TV (not counting the ones in syndication) and it hurts my heart. I admit, I was skeptical of Enterprise in the beginning when I first heard that Scott Bakula of Quantum Leap fame was going to inherit the giant shoes of William Shatner and (more importantly) Patrick Stewart. But he surprised me; he was perfect.

The premise of the show was really cool (for lack of a better word). I mean, as a Trekker (note: not Trekkie), I always wanted to know about the evolution of the transporter and warp drive. The way the Federation was formed always intrigued me. And Jolene Blalock definitely intrigued me.

Seriously, though. What did Paramount expect when they put Trek on a Friday night? Friday nights are where television shows go to die. Another show I watch right now taken a serious drop in the ratings most likely due to their Friday night time slot (Joan of Arcadia). No, I am not even in the slightest bit religious. However, the show is very well done. But I mean come on! How many people really sit at home on a Friday night and watch TV? Not too many people I know.

In the case of Firefly, Fox figured out after-the-fact that they made a big mistake taking it off the air. Yes, the show had low ratings while it was on the air... but dammit, it was put on a Friday night time slot! One of the only shows I know that did well on a Friday night was the X-Files. And not all shows are as exceptional as the X-Files once was.

I was already pissed off by UPN's overly-stereotypical portrayal of African Americans, but cancelling Enterprise has pushed me over the edge. I have actually removed the station from my DVR listing in protest and unless it's a Star Trek, I'm never watching anything on UPN ever again. I would boycott Paramount altogether, but they make too many movies... I can't avoid them in the theater.

Oh well, enjoy TV.com everyone. The crew here worked really hard to get it out the door and up and running. This is just the beginning of things to come.

Now let's have a moment of silence for Friday night shows past, present, and future...

Lumines has taken over my gaming life for the past couple weeks...

Last week I couldn't get above 638k. Today, my good friends, I'm here telling you've I've now hit 859,127 points. Now I know there are people who have already reached the 999,999 limit. Fortunately for them I don't have the time to play this game as much as I would like (what, with E3 approaching and all that).

999,999 is now within my grasp!

...is the second worst Final Fantasy in the whole series. What's the worst? Final Fantasy VII.

I'm going to wait for the fanboys to calm down before I continue.

So now you're going to ask why I think these two are horrible Final Fantasy games? Well it all centers around one theme: choice. In both VII and VIII there's just too much choice. The graphics are great. The stories are up to Final Fantasy standards (read: excellent). But there's just too much choice.

My particular flavor of Kobe Beef with these games have to do with the materia system. It took away all attempts of character differentiation. In both games using the materia system I was able to give everyone Ultima and Knights of the Round Table making the battles a complete joke. My black mage had excellent white magic abilities. My fighter could toss lightening like nobody's business. All around character differentiation went down the tubes. The idea that each character had a particular strength appealed to me. But once the materia system came in to play each character could have the exact same strengths and then the only thing to differentiate one character from another was their back story.

That, my friends, is my beef with Final Fantasy 7 and 8. With that said, one of my favorite Final Fantasy's to date is Final Fantasy 10. Why? Because they gave you limited choice. Sure, you could spend an ungodly amount of hours giving everyone the same skillset through the sphere grid... but at the end of the day, Lulu was your black mage for most of the game given that she started out in that section of the grid (unless you moved her off that section way in the beginning). This limited choice is something I prefer. I have the freedom to tweak her in-game skills but not to give her (and everyone else) the powers of a deity.

Character differentiation is important to me in a role playing game. I want to know there's a reason for me to level up one person over another. I don't want to feel like I can just have three or four main characters who are unstoppable and can do everything -- because if I feel that way, I have no inclination to play with anyone else. As it is I have my favorite characters, but I still use everyone.

Is Final Fantay VII still a good game? Yeah, it is. But it's the worst one of the bunch.

And hey, none of them even hold a candle to Chrono Trigger.