Of course, "shank" is at its origin a noun referring to a certain section of an animal's body (the thigh) that will be butchered and then consumed.

Later, the word "shank" came to be used to refer to knives; specifically, knives made in prison by prisoners. Shanks and shivs wherever I go, oy!! The verb form of the word then referred to these prison stabbings. And more unsavory things can be drawn from looser interpretations of the word.

All of the above came as preliminary research before I booted up the game SHANK, released on PSN and XBLA from developer Klei Entertainment and publisher EA at the end of August. With nothing but research on the game's title as my backup, I still had quite a bit of surprise to go through.

Shank. Costumed. Killing dudes on a bridge.

Shank is a 2D, side-scrolling beat 'em up with a strong story-telling element. Furthermore, despite its simple cartoon-like animation, it is one of the most intentionally ultra-violent games out there. Fans of the old flash video series Ninjai will recognize the style almost immediately. Though, it should be noted, Jeff Agala's art style is different from the pseudo-anime of Ninjai.

Because I'm a story nut, I tried to ignore all the visceral action (minus 10 points for using the forbidden word) and instead soaked up the dialogue and the excellent flashback sequences. And though it's a great story, it is ultimately quite derivative. Many critics were quick to compare this game to the works of filmmaker Quentin Tarantino; this comparison is absolutely appropriate. Not just for the excessive gore, no. Shank's plot is a revenge plot. Ready for the spoilers?

Shank, the titular character, is a big muscular guy who worked in a crime syndicate, led by a man named "Cesar." Shank is a loyal follower, but one day he falls in love with a young lady and gets her pregnant. Cesar tells Shank he must kill the girl (as a rather sick test of loyalty), but Shank is obviously reluctant to do so. So Cesar sends 4 of his other high-level goons to kill the chick and Shank. They take care of the girl as expected, but after roughing up Shank they leave him to die in a fire. Never a good idea; of course he's going to survive and come back years later for revenge.

You just gonna leave me to die? At my own wedding? Wait, no, that would be too similar.

Points go to the scenario writer, Marianne Krawczyk (who co-wrote the plot for the GOD OF WAR trilogy), for a well-executed tale. But no points awarded for basically re-telling the film "Kill Bill" with a male protagonist. Seriously, the entire action of the game is Shank hunting down and killing the 4 goons, and finally, Cesar himself. I seem to remember Beatrix (spoiler?) doing much the same thing. The only difference is that in Kill Bill, you have a reasonably happy ending with mother and daughter reunited. In Shank's scenario, there is no reunion. Only revenge, more revenge, and finally, a man walking into the sunset, with no one to turn to.

As far as the game itself is concerned, I have some short praise and critique. I like that Shank is capable of performing a variety of attacks with each of his three weapon types (fast, strong, and ranged). He starts with just his "shanks" (the knives), a chainsaw, and pistols. Over time he also adds a katana, two machetes, uzis, a shotgun, and chains to the roster of weaponry. They can all be changed on the fly, and each comes with a change in delay and, usually, some special attacks. On Shank's end, the combat was well thought out.

Unfortunately, I cannot give that praise to the enemies and their AI patterns. Basically, the game plays like this:

1. Fight a ton of enemies thrown at you with seemingly no order or strategy.
2. Fight a gimmicky oversized dude who can only be beaten by paying attention for special button-triggered events.
3. Fight another ton of enemies.
4. Fight a more strategic boss (about Shank's height); win by dodging attacks and then countering.

Rinse and repeat.

It's fun to control Shank, but the repetition, even for a 3 hour game, does get old by the end of the first playthrough. You do need to play smart to win; some enemies are simply immune to certain types of attacks. And when you're in a large crowd, one of the best things you can do is pounce on a smaller guy (just to incapacitate him) and then while he's down, shoot enemies around you with a pistol. Interesting concepts, to be sure.

This is step 2 of the 4-step pattern listed above.

Outside of combat, the environments do lend themselves to some fun acrobatic work. Shank can run on billboards, swing on poles, climb walls, and come out of pretty much any sticky situation with weapons at the ready. Motion is swift, and the player has to keep up if they're going to survive. They are pit deaths and other one-hit environment kills throughout the game. Always gotta watch out for that.

A quick note regarding the music: it's good, and thanks to pressure from the fans, it's free to download.

My concluding thoughts are these: the game looks great, though I could do without the excessive blood and many, many decapitations. The game plays fairly well, but overstays its welcome even considering its short length. The story is cool, but a little too derivative for its own good. And, finally, I'd just like to state that I do not ever, under any circumstances, want to be "shanked." Whatever that means.

Played: 5 hours
Platform(s): PlayStation 3 (PSN), Xbox 360 (XBLA)
Price: $14.99

Yeah, that's right, sequel. All this time I thought BLAZBLUE: CONTINUUM SHIFT was little more than an expansion. Two new characters and some gameplay mechanics being balanced. Right? Wrong.

BBCS, like Calamity Trigger before it, has this extensive story mode to it. That's the essential difference between the arcade cabinet and the console port, right? You have this huge story that fleshes out the "main event" and all things leading up to it from the perspective of every playable character. Like that Faulkner book I hated reading in high school. For those among us who can stand the "graphic adventure / visual novel" non-game experience and enjoy it being juxtaposed to the fighting, The story mode of BBCS is fan-freaking-tastic.

"Teach me: Miss Litchi!" (boobie lady!) is back! The entire 8-part series from the first game is on the disc, as are 5 new episodes. Rejoice!

Every character comes with three endings, which can be compared to the film Wayne's World. There's the normal (bad) ending, the silly (Scooby Doo) ending, and the True (generally good) ending. This time around, you don't need to lose in every fight to get 100% completion of each character's stories (though *some* fights will require it), and there aren't any secret paths opened with Distortion/Astral Finish. Generally, it's easier to get around.

AND, most importantly, it is my opinion that the script and voice acting has improved (how? I don't know!). For people who really want meat behind their favorite playable character in a fighting game, BBCS offers it in spades. You'll know in full detail where each character stands in relation to any other character very well if you complete all story paths (as I did). That's very important, since things change pretty significantly from BBCT to BBCS.

Oh, and then there's the full plot arc. When we left off in BBCT, Ragna encounters Nu-13, shit hits the fan, and they fall in a cauldron together. If you achieved the "true ending" (finishing all character paths first) in BBCT, you learned spoiler***

Noel jumps in too, saving Ragna, and somehow everyone gets out unscathed. Except Nu.

***spoiler end

In BBCS, the hinted-at villain (Hazama/Terumi) becomes a playable character and is, generally, the true villain, though by the time you reach the true ending in BBCS, you see that even he is a pawn to someone with more power and authority over the world. When you see who it is, you will pee your pants. I couldn't have guessed, only because I forgot about the character in question entirely up to this point. But those rabid fans who dig as deep into this as they do into, say, Battlestar Galactica, may be able to figure out what's coming before it hits them like a ton of bricks.

That's all I'll say about the story mode.

The "balancing" issues were mighty important. Let's face it: Jin, Nu, and Tager were overpowered. Arakune could be cheap given the right conditions. Carl and Hakumen were generally useless. Something had to be done about this. And generally, I think Arc System Works achieved their goal. I still think Jin is a little over-the-top in his power. All things being equal, a decent Litchi player is still prone to losing to a decent Jin player. You follow?

Oh, and Nu is gone. Though she is a downloadable character, her spot is essentially replaced by a weaker version of her: Lambda-11. Lambda has her own subplot in the story mode, and it's actually very interesting. Though it's mostly about sector seven scientist Kokonoe, the "Scooby Doo" ending for Lambda is actually bittersweet instead of off-the-wall hilarious. Robots make me cry.

So hey, how about those two new characters? We already mentioned Hazama. He wears a black suit, has green hair, and his movements in-game feel a hell of a lot like late '80s Michael Jackson. He's a smooth criminal, and he's got an ability that puts Scorpion's "Get Over Here!" to shame. Able to release up to 2 "Ouroboros" snakes at a time, he can latch onto the opponent, or to plain air, and then swing himself to the destination point. Handy, right? He also has daggers, and in his Unlimited mode he gets a circle of life-draining awesomeness around him. Makes for a hell of a fight on anything higher than "Normal" mode if he's your AI opponent.

Did I mention that this game is eye-gasm gorgeous? Because it is.

The other playable character is Tsubaki Yayoi. Once upon a time, we'd understand her to be Jin Kisaragi's girlfriend, and a good friend of Noel Vermilion during their school days. Today, she is a part of the NOL's "Zero Squadron," also known as the "Wings of Justice." Her job is to run around the NOL (Novis Orbus Librarium, aka "The Library") and assassinate traitors and defectors. We know even at the end of BBCT that Hazama has ordered her to hunt down both Jin and Noel. That is her primary motivation in BBCS, at least at the start. Outside of plot and motivation, her fighting style is ... slightly similar to Ragna. Though, she also has a shield-like thing that immediately makes me think of Sophitia from the SOUL CALIBUR series. However, she's one of these "I can do the same attack in four ways" kind of gals. Almost all her special movies can be performed with quarter-circles and then A B C or D. Of course, if you use D, you're using Seithr, which is gaged out very particularly for Tsubaki. It's not to be confused with the heat bar on the bottom. She has her own five-block bar which fills only when you hold D. So you hold D, then you do a special move with the D button, and it uses one of those five blocks. End result? Said special move is enhanced in one of a variety of ways. Her aerial attacks are especially deadly, or so I've found.

I noticed one thing about part of their "balancing" of characters: they changed the inputs for some special moves. It used to be easy as pie to use Rachel's signature attack "Sword Iris." Some exposition: Rachel can place up to three lightning rods on the field by shooting flowers out of a shape-shifting cat who turns into a cannon (I know, right? Isn't she the coolest character ever?!). These three lightning rods will all be struck with lightning, simultaneously, with the "Sword Iris" ability. If the opponent is standing near one or more of these rods -- well, as they say: MASSIVE DAMAGE. Sword Iris used to be accomplished with something like, down down B. Now it's something like half-circle back, forward, C. I don't have that exactly right, but the point is, it's a little harder to achieve. Being a career Rachel player, this is the one move that comes to my attention, but I did notice a few other characters having their special ability inputs tampered with between BBCT and BBCS. I guess that's all part of balance. That, and, reducing the amount of damage characters do. Or, in the case of Hakumen, increasing said damage. And explaining the freakin' Magatama system a little better.

BlazBlue: Continuum Shift is basically perfect. It is the 2D fighter. And for $39.99 (compare that to BBCT which retailed for $59.99 last year) it's a steal. Mind you that these days, BBCT will only by $19.99 at most stores, so you can get both games and sit through a hell of a lot of dialogue if you're into the story mode, like I am. But even if you hate story mode, this game is well worth the money just for arcade mode and online versus mode. The fighting is intricate, and button-mashing will get you nowhere against a player with the slightest amount of skill and knowledge.

BBCS's only flaw? EXPENSIVE DLC!! I'm all for adding characters via DLC, but don't dick with me. They've announced that 3 characters are coming, and they're $8 each. So far one is out: Makoto Nanaya. She's the third in a trio of gals that were friends in school (Noel, Tsubaki, Makoto). Makoto is a beastkin humanoid (half-squirrel). As a fighter, she's absolutely great. She uses her fists, and her "D" attacks rely on a small gage that fills and then re-empties quickly (like kicking a field goal in almost every football game ever). That's awesome, right? Well she's pretty cool. But she's eight freaking dollars! That's one fifth the price of the full retail game! And get this: no single-player arcade mode for her! What?! I wasn't expecting her to get her own story mode, though at $8, I almost find it warranted. But at a minimum, she ought to have an arcade mode where I play through 10 characters and get some basic exposition on her. Nope! She can only be used in multiplayer versus modes. That is weak sauce. Am I going to pay another $16 for Valkenhayn (Rachel's butler) and Platinum (some kid with multiple personalities)? Not bloody likely! I'll wait until they're included in the third game.

Oh oh oh, speaking of! BBCS makes no bones about whether or not there will be a third game. There will be. And it will take place in Ikaruga. Both BBCT and BBCS took place in Kagutsuchi, the "13th Hierarchical City." The next game will be in Ikaruga, the land of the ninja clan that Bang Shishigami belongs to. The game's story mode, and even the arcade mode, clues you in to the fact that this place is little more than rubble now thanks to a civil war that ended in some sort of horrific, worse-than-multiple-atomic-bomb-drop mass death. Whatever happened there has piqued the interest of all characters, good and bad, so that's where we're going next. I cannot wait, and they share as hell better make Jubei playable.

Before I forget, I should mention that Nu is also downloadable if you want her back from BBCT (I think she's like $5 instead of the standard $8), and that Mu-12, a character you'll meet in the story mode, is free but can only be unlocked by getting the true ending in story mode (or, I think, beating arcade mode with all characters). Either way, she's cheap as hell and totally worth it. While Lambda and Nu are essentially the same, Mu plays with a completely different weapon type and is almost unstoppable, especially in unlimited mode.

Oh oh oh! One last thing! Do you feel like you can't get into this game because the complex combos require all sorts of charts, graphs, and practice? They actually introduced a "beginner mode" that you can flip on that turns your assigned buttons into combos. So button mashing CAN work, if your opponent agrees to let you use beginner mode. Even then, though, you better know when to execute them or you're screwed.

Go get this game. Play it a lot. Be happy. But beware the DLC. It does not get to be a part of the perfect 5-star ranking! Makoto SHUN!!!

Played: 30+ hours
Platform(s): PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
Price: $39.99

a) quirky
b) awesome

In the case of VIRAL SURVIVAL, a $5 WiiWare title developed by Peakvox, we get a lot of a, but only a bit of b.

Much to my surprise, this game actually does come from Japan (original title, "Escape Virus"). It feels like an indie game developed in a basement. That's not meant to be a damning statement -- plenty of great games have had such a humble origin. But it does feel... small, and unrefined.

If you play this game for more than 30 minutes straight, your eyes will hate you, and the color orange, for days to come.

What is Viral Survival? It's a fast-paced action game that thrives on short busts of play and intentional limitations. You control a virus in a square-shaped petri dish. While swimming in a sea of orange goop, you can run into any of the following: other viruses, two or three varieties of bad guys (presumably anti-viral agents), and rockets. Grab a fellow virus, and he tags along. The more you grab, the longer your tail becomes. Hitting a rocket means rocket(s) go out and hit bad guys. If you, as the "head virus," make contact with a baddy, you're dead. Game over. If someone on your tail hits a bad guy, that segment of the tail and all segments after it go loose, like Sonic's rings.

You've fought segmented bosses in games before right? Remember every boss in 3D WORLD RUNNER, or those giant serpents that appear in every fantasy action RPG (up to and including YS SEVEN)? Yeah, well you're playing as one of those bosses. Except your form of regeneration is to find virus pals and grow longer, and you have no armor for your head.

And that's about it. The game comes in five modes: Normal, Progressive (up = forward, left/right = turn), Horde (lots of bad guys), 128 Zoom (um...), and Shooter. 128 Zoom mode is very specific: the camera is force-zoomed very very close so you basically have no idea where anything is. You have to collect 128 viruses and then the round ends. Shooter mode is my favorite, because you're equipped with missiles to shoot loads of bad guys and there are no viruses to collect. The drawback is that it's not twin-stick like, say, SUPER SMASH TV. You must face the direction you're shooting in. I think I could survive longer in shooter mode.

Horde mode = find power-ups, bowl through the enemies Pac-Man style (complete with inverted colors!).

The longer you play, the more you notice little quirks about the game. For example, your head virus has a little eye that will always look in the direction of the nearest "good thing" (either a rocket or a fellow virus). But I don't recommend playing this game in long spans of time. It will hurt your eyes.

All told, I'm not sure I can recommend this game. A part of me says "look at the price point: $5 really isn't that bad." But then I think about what else I can get with $5. In the land of XBLA, particularly in the "Indie" section, I can get games of equal or greater quality for less money (anywhere from free to $3). It's nice having an oldschool-style "run away!" arcade title on WiiWare, but then again, I'd just as soon play a free flash game on my PC.

If the game had more than one song, visuals that didn't make me want to hurl, and perhaps some sort of story/level/campaign mode, I'd be willing to rate it higher. As it stands? Nah. Only get this if the Wii i's the only console you got and most of your friends are too ADD to play anything that requires more than 45 seconds of concentration.

Played: 3 hours
Platform(s): Wii (WiiWare)
Price: $5.00

Anyway, SUPER MEAT BOY, Twisted Pixel's very promising COMIC JUMPER, HYDROPHOBIA and the like are anchoring the Game Feast calendar. Just something to keep in mind as you read on.)

The Hotshots vs. the Icemen! Transcending history and the world, a tale of laser turrets eternally retold. (Uber Entertainment)

If a layman judged this summer’s video game offerings based purely on retail, he or she would be rightfully disappointed. As boxed titles go, the last three months have been dreadfully bare — typical for June, July and the first half of August, but disappointing nonetheless.

Remember the heady days of May, which gave us “Red Dead Redemption,” “Super Mario Galaxy 2,” “Alan Wake,” “Blur,” “Split/Second” and other blockbusters within days of each other? Since then, there’s been “StarCraft II,” and then there was everything else.

Fortunately, we’ve nearly turned the page on all of that archaic brick-and-mortar nonsense. With few exceptions, this summer’s best games have been downloadable — either exclusively or as a companion to their boxed cousins — and priced at $15 or less.

The results have been heartening.

Though I’m as console-agnostic as can be, Microsoft gets the gold star this year. Their third annual Summer of Arcade promotion packed a lot of polish and diversity into five timed exclusives, starting in July with LIMBO (reviewed in this space last month) and wrapping up last week with the sublime LARA CROFT AND THE GUARDIAN OF LIGHT, which I’ll discuss here shortly.

Summer of Arcade dropped a clunker in 2008 and 2009, and 2010 doesn’t buck that trend. CASTLEVANIA: HARMONY OF DESPAIR, with its charmlessly dated visuals and slipshod multiplayer getup, is to this summer what GALAGA LEGIONS and the remake of TURTLES IN TIME were to the summers before it.

But four out of five ain’t bad.

That isn’t to suggest that the PlayStation Network has been totally worthless this summer, despite Sony’s best efforts to make the thing unusable. PSN got a two-week jump on Xbox Live with the video game adaptation of SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD, a nostalgia-throttling 2-D brawler that owes more to Bryan Lee O’Malley’s comics than it does to Edgar Wright’s wonderful movie.

As of this week, that title is available on both services.

And DEATHSPANK, the silly-ish hack-and-slash from Hothead Games and Monkey Island co-creator Ron Gilbert, debuted in July on the Xbox 360 and PS3 simultaneously. That likely will be the case next month, too, when the game’s surprise sequel, announced just this week, hits servers everywhere.

Same goes for SHANK, the hysterically violent side-scrolling brawler unleashed on both services Wednesday.

It’s Sony’s lethargy about locking down down exclusives (not to mention those innumerable, lengthy updates that cut off your PSN access) that keeps the PS3 from being truly competitive summer after summer after summer.

Sure, they’ve got the bead on Q Games’ great Pixeljunk titles, and they’ll probably get the exclusive on JOURNEY, thatgamecompany’s follow-up to FLOWER.  There are also those wonderful, barely announced oddities, like space-spelunker GRAVITY CRASH.

But four years after Sony launched PSN, it still trails Xbox Live and Steam as a destination for digital content. I’m not insisting that the company line up more exclusives, but until Microsoft stops throwing money at publishers, Sony’s going to have to find a way to get in the game.

That said, here’s my pick for the best downloadable title of the last three months:

LARA CROFT AND THE GUARDIAN OF LIGHT

Available only on Xbox Live until late September, Crystal Dynamics has put together an attractive, robust action-adventure title that borrows the twin-stick shooting of GEOMETRY WARS and the isometric perspective of DIABLO.

It’s an unsettling blend at first, but it grows on you quickly. Jumping feels great, the physics-based puzzles are satisfying to solve, and the shooting is legitimate fun — something that’s never been true of Lara’s TOMB RAIDER games.

The game also makes a great argument for abolishing the artificial cap on trophies and achievements in downloadable titles. As officially sanctioned Microsoft achievements go, LARA CROFT offers a handful of inventive challenges — catch your co-op partner with your grappling hook, beat a boss, jump off your partner’s shield — but they pale in comparison to a bevy of in-game tasks that reward exploration and reflexes with new guns and other goodies. Unlocking them all requires multiple playthroughs and a commitment of a dozen hours or more.

(Your partner, by the by, is an English-proficient, cartoonishly brawny dude native to the tombs you’re raiding. As things stand today, you can play him only as a local co-op partner, though Crystal Dynamics has pledged to integrate online co-op by the end of next month. Until then, so much for those co-op achievements!)

In other words, there’s more than enough content here to justify the full 1,000-point treatment. So how about it, Microsoft?

This article appeared first in the York Dispatch.

Y'all.

Have you ever read a post written by a blogger who feels mildly contrite about ditching his readers? No? Weird, because people do this all the time. I'm about to do it!

(The apologizing bit. Not the ditching bit.)

Prickishness aside, sorry for the absence. It's not that I haven't been thinking about games or playing or writing about them -- I definitely have, I swear -- I've just been terribly busy preparing myself for a project I'm kicking off early next year. It's unusual of me to think more than a week in advance, especially where money is concerned, but I've finally got some incentive. And I'm not getting any younger.

I'd be more vague about all of this if I could. Wait, maybe I can. I'm getting ready for something you guys will find really exciting, and I absolutely intend to deliver on that promise. It's something I've tried before, and it involves doggie day-care and a bicycle. The entire endeavor will be chronicled exhaustively in this space.

There. Those are all the clues you monsters get.

Anyway, I have some stuff for you guys! One of them is a Gameosaurus first. It's a review I wrote two weeks ago for MONDAY NIGHT COMBAT, the great DOTA-inspired Xbox Live Arcade title released early this month. The review was published in the Dispatch, but our network deleted the file before I could archive it.

So I took a picture! And I'm too lazy to transcribe it. Click to embiggen.

My second item is the latest episode of the Jurassic Hour, which I recorded with Pat Gann a few weeks ago. Pete Rambo joins us one last time to hold forth on why moving is at once terrible and awesome. Plus, LIMBO, STARCRAFT II, NIER and other games we've been playing. It's a good episode and deserves more and fancier preamble than this, but I don't want you guys to have to wait any longer. With music from Anamanaguchi, the Mad Caddies, Phantom Planet and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy.

The episode has been in the show feed for a while. If you missed it there, get it here!

(right-click to save, use theplayer below, or get the show on iTunes here)

Jurassic Hour #8: Point A to Point B

I'm posting a column here Tuesday summing up Microsoft's Summer of Arcade (and the complete lethargy Sony showed in response), and you can expect another podcast shortly after that. And with the fall gaming season kicking into gear, you can expect our impressions of METROID: OTHER M, VALKYRIA CHRONICLES II, YS SEVEN, BLAZBLUE: CONTINUUM SHIFT and more -- not to mention the triple-A heavyweights that drop toward the end of September. For me, that's HALO: REACH and CIVILIZATION V.

For Patrick ... I don't know. It'll probably be a couple unjustly derided eastern RPGs published stateside by Aksys with an initial production run of 800 copies and a heap of Twitter buzz, amirite? I mean, there is an Atelier game slated for October or something, right?

Stay frosty in the interim, folks. LYLAS!

The chance that I might lose is paralyzing. And losing in front of other people, what with the spectating and replay features packed into so many games today? Forget it. Get out of here.

So I approached STARCRAFT II: WINGS OF LIBERTY last month’s sequel to Blizzard Entertainment’s 1998 strategy landmark, with some serious performance anxiety. I remembered the first game as a neat single-player experience with great voice-acting, but to the millions of people still playing it 12 years later, the game’s multiplayer suite has become a lifestyle — or, worse, a spectator sport.

In parts east, professional STARCRAFT players are bona fide celebrities, swimming in endorsement money and actions per minute and barely ironic nicknames. South Korea recently lost its collective marbles after a betting scandal rocked the country’s professional StarCraft community.

Horrifying. I would use exclamation points if our in-house style guidelines allowed as much, such is my disgust.

But part of my brain always knew not to worry. For as long as Blizzard has been making games, the company has expertly juggled the interests of casual and hardcore players — see “World of Warcraft,” where I self-destructively reactivated my account last week — and Wings of Liberty is no exception.

Love yourself: The multiplayer functionality, powered by Blizzard’s recently overhauled Battle.net matchmaking service, is the main draw here, and it’s the thing that’s going to give StarCraft II legs until 2029, when the first chapter of STARCRAFT III will enter a closed, three-year multiplayer beta. Or something.

But because I flip my lid at the mere suggestion of human opponents, I plunked down my $60 mostly for the single-player content. And I’m happy to report that this is a perfectly satisfactory way to experience the game. The full campaign is spread over 26 missions, each of which can take as long as 45 minutes to complete. There are a few additional missions scattered about as well, but you’ll have to interfere with the adventure’s narrative momentum if you want to see them all in one playthrough.

About halfway through the game, for instance, you’re forced to choose between two special ops units to add to your army. The Ghost is a professional, long-ranged sniper unit. The Spectre is an unhinged, short-ranged bruiser. Both have cloaking devices and can paint targets for nuclear attacks, which is the only thing you’ll use them for anyway.

But because Ghosts and Spectres hate each other, you can choose only one. And in so doing, you get a unique mission.

You’ll make a handful of such choices throughout the campaign, and though the manichean outcomes feel a little obvious at times, the extra missions greatly extend the game’s solo playability.

The same goes for the bevy of upgrades, secrets, varying difficulties and achievements that litter the single-player side of things. There’s simply an overwhelming amount of content exclusive to the campaign, which makes a fine argument for the pricetag on its own. Many Terran standbys from the first StarCraft — Wraiths, Goliaths, Vultures, science vessels — are back in slightly upgraded form, but they’re only found in the campaign.

Blizzard’s storytelling always leaves something to be desired, but the experience here is exceptional in spite of itself. Plotting is dense but strangely paced, thanks mostly to the freedom the game affords you when choosing missions. Several important characters are teased early on but don’t appear in earnest until the last few hours of the tale.

But the eye-raising ending, which concludes an important arc from the first game, is absolutely killer.

And if you’re chomping at the bit for the first of two expansion packs already announced for the game, you’ll have some pretty big questions at the end of Wings of Liberty. To say anything else would be to tiptoe into spoiler territory, but take my word for it — they’re intriguing questions.

Okay, fine: Because the missions are so fun and so varied, you’ll likely tear through them more quickly than you mean to. And if you aren’t inclined to do all of that a second or third time, you’ll have no choice but to try the multiplayer.

Because it will sit there, softly mocking you from the unknowable depths of your hard drive platter. Teasing your loved ones, calling you names and threatening to corrupt your iTunes library unless you man up.

Fortunately, Blizzard has gone out of its way to make the online experience more palatable for wimps like me. A series of nine solo challenge missions teaches you the basics — counters, hotkeys and whatnot — of the three playable factions, measurably improving your performance.

After messing about with the Terran challenges, my early-game Marine / Marauder / Medivac build can withstand feints from Sentry / Zealot raiding parties and most Zergling / Hydralisk rushes. If that means nothing to you, congratulations. To me, it means survival.

And though I’ve yet to to officially take my game into league play, I’ve tried enough custom games and watched so many YouTube and Justin.tv matches that I feel comfortable praising Battle.net’s stability and matchmaking. Blizzard said months ago that Wings of Liberty had been delayed so long because of improvements to its online service, and after poking at it for two weeks, it’s clear that the finished product was worth the wait.

As good as Battle.net has become, though, the best news about multiplayer matches in StarCraft II is that they are entirely optional. You can buy this game, never step online and feel completely confident about your purchase. There’s a lot of game here.

This article originally appeared in the York Dispatch

Seriously, spiders are the least of your problems.

I'm fully aware that STARCRAFT II debuted Tuesday at 12:01 a.m. EDT, and I'm enjoying this singular, momentous, 12-years-in-the-making achievement as much as anybody. If I could have played hooky Tuesday and Wednesday to run all the way through the game's incredible single-player campaign, I'd be writing that up for today.

But at my yeoman's pace, that will take a week or more.

Thank the maker, then, for remarkable, bite-sized adventures like Danish developer PlayDead Studio's LIMBO, a moody platformer released last week on Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade.

Worlds apart from the canonical baggage that shapes franchises like StarCraft, the only narrative context you'll find in LIMBO exists entirely outside the game itself.

As Wikipedia's curators have it, you control a boy in pursuit of his missing sister.

And ... that's it.

The game's description on Xbox Live is similarly vague, and PlayDead has shown no interest in elaborating on any of it.

That's just as well. Not knowing who you are, where you are or why you're there makes a strange sort of sense in this quiet, brutal world, where spiders are as big as houses and up is often down.

Put another way, LIMBO isn't about hit points or water physics or some densely woven narrative. It's about the purity of the platforming experience, and by that metric, it performs like a champ.

As the game starts, you're coming to your senses in a dense parallax forest. The camera eases into focus for what feels like forever -- your avatar takes more than a minute to sit up, open two lamp-like eyes and climb to his feet.

This whole sequence is a joy to watch.

Eventually, you'll realize the game has relinquished control to you, and your inborn gaming vocabulary tells you to run right. You'll clamber up a small hill, instinctively jump off an enormous log and immediately fall to your death.

Then you'll respawn, start over and get it right.

This will happen to you dozens of times -- maybe a hundred or more. You'll drown, electrocute yourself, alert automatic turrets and get skewered by the aforementioned spiders.

The game's gorgeous, occasionally devilish aesthetic is partly to blame for your haplessness. Your character (and the other ten or so living creatures that populate LIMBO) are drawn only in sillhouette, and the entire game is rendered in black, white and a thousand handsome shades of gray.

So you'd be forgiven for glancing past that narrow strip of spikes that closes around your tiny legs the moment you disturb it. Or the tiny natives who attack you with blowguns on sight. Or the gravity-suspending switch that will keep you from plummeting to your doom.

PlayDead calls this "trial by death," and though it occasionally bummed me out -- I grew attached to my nameless, voiceless hero, and watching this world vivisect him over and over again was unsettling -- it works well enough.

Some of the puzzles might seem inapproachable at first, but most of them give away their secrets as soon as they slaughter you.

If you work at my pace, you'll clear the game in a little under three hours. Then, unless you're fishing for a few fantastic achievements or salivating for a second go, your time with LIMBO is regretfully finished. Like "The Empire Strikes Back," it's the sort of thing you wish you could forget, if only so that you could experience it for the first time all over again.

So, yes. It's short. I hesitate to mention all of that that in the same breath as the game's pricetag, as nearly every writer in the gaming press has managed to do. Yeah, the going rate for Xbox Live Arcade games this summer is $15, and no, LIMBO doesn't buck that trend.

But when an interactive moment is as fun and thoughtfully crafted as this one is, $15 is a bargain. If even the Practice League in StarCraft II is handing your dignity to you on a digital platter, consider LIMBO.

This article originally appeared in the York Dispatch.

In this weekmonth's episode, BFF / RPCV (retired Peace Corps volunteers, duh) Pat Himes talks about his time in Kyrgyzstan, where he pooped for two years before returning a few weeks ago.

Then, Sabotage Yahoo! Answers and what we've been playin', all colored by Himes' time in Central Asia.

With music from The Gregory Brothers, Radiohead and Mel Gibson. Sweet, sweet music.

(right-click to save, use theplayer below, or get the show on iTunes here)

Jurassic Hour #7: So Intense!

I’d love to tell you that I’ve curated a complete library of games from celebrated shoot-’em-up developer Treasure, but I’d be lying.

I’ve struggled through all five stages of IKARUGA, played a couple levels of GUNSTAR HEROES and rented GRADIUS V once, and that’s the long and short of it. The games are famously hard, and I’m a wimp.

So I can’t really tell you whether it’s strange for Treasure titles to attack you with pods of homicidal dolphins and bionic hamsters, as SIN & PUNISHMENT: STAR SUCCESSOR does.

What I can tell you: If you like lasers and a stiff challenge, you’ll like Star Successor, released exclusively on the Wii earlier this summer.

You control one of two tween warriors — Isa, who has a jetpack, and Kachi, who has a hoverboard. Aside from a few mechanical differences, that’s all you need to know about either of them up front. They journey forward in three dimensions, switching occasionally to side-scrolling 2-D, and shoot everything that moves using rapid-fire laser weapons, melee attacks and a charged shot that can dispatch multiple enemies at once.

There’s a story of sorts, but if you play the game, I beg you to skip as much of it as possible. It’s nonsense of the lowest order, and even if it were Shakespeare, you’d be tempted to blow past it. The gunplay is the main attraction here, and it’s sublime.

By pinning the movement controls to the nunchuk and the aiming and firing to the remote, Treasure has developed one of the tightest action games to use Nintendo’s novelty controller. Thanks in part to a largely flawless frame rate, everything feels fluid, precise and incredibly responsive. When you get hit in Star Successor, it’s usually your fault, not the hardware’s.

Played start to finish on the easiest difficulty, the game takes only a few hours, but if you stop there, you’re missing the point. The real thrills come from mastering the many, many bosses, each with its own tricks and shortcuts, and eventually clearing the game without dying (or, if you’re nuts, without getting hit at all).

And the differences between Isa and Kachi are substantial enough to warrant playing through Star Successor at least twice. Isa’s lasers and charged shot are meant to be blind-fired for extra damage, though he can lock on to an enemy when things get hectic.

Kachi locks on to enemies automatically — a handy feature when you’re trying to boost your multiplier by killing every one of the hundreds of smaller monsters that swarm you, but an occasionally frustrating when you’re trying to select a strongerr target.

Her charge shot, however, is much more fun to use. While holding the A button, you sweep your on-screen reticle across each enemy you want to hit. Release, and voila. Lasered dudes.

There are a couple of wrinkles, particularly where those terrific boss fights are concerned.

Because you’ll be dying at the bosses’ hands quite a bit, it would be nice to be able to skip some of the cutscenes involved in fighting them. The end boss of the fourth stage, for instance, shouts “My blood is on fire!” after taking enough damage, shrieking as she morphs into a kind of winged jungle witch.

The process takes a few moments, and because this boss’ second form is exponentially tougher than her first, you’ll likely have to start over a few times, which means sitting through the entire sequence again and again.

Hammering on the Wii remote’s plus button will get you past most of the ridiculous story moments. (Pro tip: It even speeds up your Gameover screen.) But not the bosses. We’re talking about just a few seconds here and there, but when they’re repeated every time you die, they can make a stubborn boss all the more frustrating.

The game’s other major design hurdle isn’t necessarily a dealbreaker, though it might scare off more casual players.

Most of the challenge in Star Successor is impossible to anticipate if you’re brand new to the game. You’ll be struggling through impossible bullet patterns and boss attacks that seemingly cannot be dodged on your first go, and though this all becomes second nature with enough repetition, it can feel cheap up front.

If you’re a once-and-done kind of gamer, or one who’s easily set off, this might be a problem. For example, that same fourth-stage boss — the one who enthuses about her fiery blood — eventually unleashes a flock of blue and red birds that she calls her “ravens of time.” Once the ravens reach your character, they turn into circular blobs that appear to be unblockable.

Only through experimenting (or reading this review) will you learn that you have to use your melee attack on the blue raven blob, which will explode nearby red blobs and slow down time so that you can get in a few extra hits.

If you accidentally touch one of the red blobs instead, time speeds up, giving said boss a few free hits on you.

It’s one of hundreds of unpredictable risk-reward scenarios littered throughout the game, and it isn’t unique to the bosses. Do you use your melee attack on an incoming missile to fire it back at your target, or do you dodge the missile to keep your score multiplier safe?

How this sort of thing rubs you could decide whether Star Successor is your kind of game. I found it exhilirating and well-crafted, but I’m a patient, nimble masochist. Your mileage may vary.

Recently, I declared in an editorial on RPGFan that I am, among other things, a hypocrite. I used to really lay into people who found themselves "stuck" to their avatars. You know... the type who are still playing the original EVERQUEST after all these years. Well with FFXI's new content update, I'm back in, and I'm back in strong. I've at least mentioned it on every one of the last 4 or 5 episodes of The Jurassic Hour. Short summary of the June 2010 content update:

• Level cap increase (for the first time in 6 years) from 75 to 80, with plans to eventually increase to 99.
• Some new crazy, combat-based add-on scenario called VISION OF ABYSSEA (with two more "Abyssea" titles to follow in coming months).
• Finally reaching the end of a three-year plot arc for the fourth proper expansion, WINGS OF THE GODDESS.
• New spells, abilities, equipment, etc for all jobs.
• New endgame event tied to WotG called "Walk of Echoes."

That sucked me right back into the game after going a good six months of only logging in, at most, once a month for a few hours. In the last two weeks I've played more than I have in the last, say, nine months or so. There's been a lot to do and I'm enjoying it.

Even more fortuitous is that I managed to ruin the lives of bring back my older brother and his wife to play the game as well. They too were intrigued by the content update. They used to have separate characters, but they've decided to kill off my brother's character (who never reached the old 75 level cap) and share the account of the character named Lauralanthalasa, a female Elvaan Paladin. Said character has plenty of stuff to accomplish, but with the latest update, it will be easier than ever.

For example, the second expansion, CHAINS OF PROMATHIA, was designed to be played with leveling in mind. It's broken into eight chapters, and each chapter had players traversing different zones, and fighting different bosses, with a "level cap" for that area. Chapter 1 was 30-cap, chapters 2 and 3 were 40-cap, etc. Well, they lifted those caps with this update, but kept all the enemies at the same level. Areas that used to require a party of 6 or more to safely travel through can now be soloed without batting an eye. Very exciting for my brother and sister-in-law.

All of this has put me back into a state of frantic activity. Indeed, I am "active." Of course, that means my guild took notice. Now, in FFXI, we have proprietary terms for everything, so this ain't a guild. It's a Linkshell. The specific Linkshell in question is Bringer of the Dawn, which resides on the Leviathan server. I've I'd been with them for over 3 years. During certain periods of my life, I was very active in the game, which meant I was very active with the LS. We had mandatory events on Wednesday and Sunday evenings, and other optional events nearly every other evening. I attended most of this stuff. That allowed me to rack up attendance points, which then allowed me to lot on high-end gear and stuff. But, awesome as that was, what's more important is that the majority of my friends were on there. They'd help me. I'd help them. As a White Mage, it's in my nature to help and I do like to help as much as I can. However, I did prioritize certain things for myself, particularly as a writer for RPGFan, I wanted to make sure I was always up-to-date on story content.

Before we go any further, let's introduce the cast of characters for my story, which is sure to rival my last whiny rejection post.

Hiya! This is me, Tonelico. As you can see, I'm a male Tarutaru, and my graphics card leaves a lot to be desired. I only have one endgame job: White Mage. I like to stand back and keep people alive while they bravely charge into battle. It's my thing. I'm also (slowly) working on making Summoner an endgame job as well thanks to this cheap exp-grinding strategy.

I've been playing, with differing levels of regularity, since 2006. My primary goals are to complete all story-centric missions, and I'm pretty well up to speed with that goal. More MMORPGs need this kind of linearity. But I digress. Next up!

That's Lauralanthalasa (a name taken from the Dragonlance books). Only endgame job is Paladin (tank job). This avatar is controlled at times by my older brother, and at times by my older brother's wife. Of all the people in today's story, they are the most "casual" players, with well under 100 days logged. The fact that they have an endgame character with their schedules is a miracle. They're working on completing the story stuff that I've already done and keeping up with the new level cap stuff. Lauralanthalasa is the only person in our story who is not, and was never, a part of BotD.

The central character of today's story (other than me) is Antonioklaus. Above, he is pictured as a Summoner. Antonioklaus has all mage jobs leveled (WHM RDM BLM SMN) as well as Bard, Ninja, Paladin, and probably others I don't know about. I haven't asked him in awhile, but I'm sure he has well over 500 days logged into FFXI. Of note, while he is not the founder of the "Bringer of the Dawn" Linkshell, he is its self-proclaimed dictator for the past few years. Also noteworthy: he has the relic Bard instrument "Gjallarhorn" which is insanely powerful, yet he tends not to want to play Bard even after having invested thousands of hours into getting that one item. He also has a wife and kids and is known to play for 8 to 12 hour blocks of time. He has more than once whined on the LS about wanting to divorce his wife because she mismanages money. I'll allow you to express your judgments as you see fit.

Draylo is one of my favorite people in FFXI. He is often willing to help with activities, even if there's no immediate gain to him, because he enjoys the experience and/or can call in the favor at a later point in time. Draylo is an extremely active member of BotD, as well as its sister Dynamis/Einherjar event LS, "Beacon." He's got a lot of jobs leveled (I believe he's pictured as a Blue Mage above). Unfortunately, his role in the coming story isn't the one I hoped it'd be. But I still respect the guy because he's an open communicator and is always understanding of others.

You know in that one episode of South Park where the Canadian character Scott is introduced: "that's Scott, he's a dick!" Like, every character in the show knows that by the end of the episode. Well... "that's Shelbelle, she's a bitch!"

Antonioklaus has some strange bedfellows: people that follow him, worship him, and know how to act like an even bigger prick than him. Shelbelle is #1 on that list. She has most of the same jobs leveled as Anto (most mage jobs). From the first time I entered an event with Shel, I knew she'd be trouble. It was about two years ago, when she started making snide remarks about me, claiming I was an "inferior WHM," telling me how to play my job, etc.

(Aside: y'know when people are like "don't tell me how to do my job!!!"? It's a lot funnier when your "job" is a class in a videogame.)

Shelbelle has a planet-sized chip on her shoulder. She hides it sometimes, but I've yet to see such a catty player as her in my life. Fitting that she plays as a Mithra. Seriously, she talks down to everyone and never gives anyone the benefit of the doubt. Everything is everyone's fault but hers. She's just totally unlikeable. Of course, she also plays the game 24/7 so people try to get along with her so they can be in her good graces, much the same way she has cozied up to Antonioklaus. If Anto is away for a day, or a weekend, Shelbelle is probably the one who gets to call the shots these days.

Hellick is a cool dude. He plays a lot of "front line" melee jobs: Blue Mage, Samurai, etc. Last I checked, he's still a member of BotD, though that may change. He plays a particularly important role in the epilogue of the story.

So that's our cast of characters. Let's get down to business.

-------------

In late June 2010 (between the 20th and 22nd), the aforementioned major content update was pushed through all FINAL FANTASY XI servers. Feeling the immediate need to get my WHM from 75 to 80, I decided that's what I'd devote my time to so it would 1) be easier to complete story-based missions and 2) make me a more worthwhile WHM for my LS.

Before this point, I had been inactive. Really inactive. I said as much in the post's intro. So me showing up again, having my BotD Linkpearl equipped (allowing me to chat within the LS), must've raised some eyebrows. "Who is this old fart?" some must have thought. But I was back, and I was going to get my WHM un-gimped, come hell or high water.

Granted, I also work a 40 hour job, write for RPGFan (and other sites, like this one, which is where I can let my hair down!), and I got a wife and kids who I intend to neglect far less than Anto must to his family. So when I found time, that's when I'd level.

On Sunday, June 27, 2010, at about 7pm, I was in the middle of an excellent experience points grind party for my WHM. It was going really well, and I wanted to keep it going so I could get to 80 faster. I get a tell (private, one-on-one message) from LS mate, Draylo. "Hey, we're doing B2 (Bahamut 2) run, you coming?" I take this as a suggestion. Like, "the LS is doing this, should be fun, wanna come up?" I've done the Bahamut 2 fight a number of times. It's basically like the first Bahamut fight, but harder, and with good drops. I said "no, I'll pass, got good exp going here."

I then get a tell from Shelbelle that just says "you coming?" Instead of replying to her, I asked Dray why someone else was bugging me? He said "it's a Sunday event. It's a mandatory event."

Now, granted, I hadn't been privy to months' worth of discussion (and we'll get to that), but the last I had heard, the rule was that LS members attended the Sunday and Wednesday night events. If they didn't attend an event but were logged on the game, they would get like, minus 25 points. "Points" are tracked on the LS's website, and they're awarded for attendance at mandatory and non-mandatory events. This is a common thing for all MMO guilds to do. I figure I could take the hit on the points, and I remembered long ago talking to Anto about being deemed an "inactive" member of BotD, which meant: I could talk to people in the LS, go to events when I felt like it, not really lot on any cool gear but still have fun with the group, and stay in.

Either I was on crack, or Anto's memory is short-lived and he's since made up new rules.

Anyway, I told Draylo via tells that I had had said conversation with Anto and it shouldn't be a problem. Draylo seemed concerned for me (at the time I didn't understand why, now I do...). I continued to exp while they killed Bahamut and got sweet gear. They did just fine without having the extra WHM around that day.

The next night, Monday night, I logged on quickly to get in a little exp and "allied notes" using the "campaign battle" system set up with the fourth expansion, WINGS OF THE GODDESS. I was on the Linkshell, and when a campaign battle started in Xarcabard [S], I thought it would be worth letting the LS know. I mean, it usually amounts to big points on all fronts; people want to know about it. People usually want to hop in for 30 minutes and get sweet grind-age out of it.

So I say in LS chat: "to anyone who's interested, there's a campaign battle in Xarcabard [S]!"

To which I see a lone reply from Antonioklaus: "to anyone, whether they're interested or not, Sunday night events are mandatory."

Wow. Passive aggressive much?

He could've sent me a tell at any point Sunday night. Or Monday night. He could've said "look, we're tightening rules around here, gonna need you to come to LS events." Instead he decided to be a prick about it. But whatever, it wasn't the first time and it wouldn't be the last.

I didn't play at all Tuesday. Then Wednesday came, and that was around the time the miracle occurred. My older brother and his wife resurrected their even more inactive account (theirs was cancelled, they hadn't paid a dime on it for a year). With the removal of the level caps on CoP, I was excited about rushing them through the CoP missions so they could witness what I consider one of the better plotlines of an FF title, period. So that evening we set off to Phomiuna Aqueducts to complete mission 2-3 (which, despite what you might think, still does require two people because of a simultaneous switch-pull near the end of the zone). Along the way, as I passed through Lufaise Meadows, I saw a ram-based NM I'd never seen before. Unsure of its level, but assuming it couldn't be too hard, Chris and I attacked it, only to die in a record 8 seconds. I thought this funny, so I decided to mention it in LS chat. "Anyone ever fought 'Flockbock' before? Just got creamed by it." Someone in LS (I actually do not remember who) said "The only NM I know is _____" (and they put in that blank the name of the NM the LS was currently fighting). What I didn't know was that the Wednesday "mandatory event," which I actually assumed was canceled (as Wednesdays often are ... as I write this article, Antonioklaus is off leveling instead of participating in an event), was a ZNM run. I didn't even know ZNM runs were part of the rotation! "Zeni Notorious Monsters" require doing a Pokemon Snap-style event to take pictures of enemies. Then you earn points. Then you use those points to pop the NMs and they take 6 or more people to kill. That's what I was missing out on. To be honest, I happily would've been there, if not for the enthusiastic return of my in-laws to the world of Vana'diel.

Anyway, after I made my gaffe in LS chat and another member made their damning statement, Antonioklaus said something along the lines of: "you don't get it, do you? This is mandatory."

I was silent for a little, and my daughter was crying. I walked away from the computer for about 2 minutes.

Upon my return, I saw in my LS chat history from Antonioklaus:

"Oh, now you're ignoring me, are you?"
"I guess it's time to do some weeding."

And then I saw a system message I'd never seen in my 4 years on the game. It said that my linkpearl had been broken by an administrator. I was no longer a member of Bringer of the Dawn.

It was the only LS I'd ever been a part of. There were full years where I was active, attending every event, mandatory or no, just because I had the time. I don't have the time anymore. Whatever. I was pissed, because I don't like rejection, and I sure as hell don't like it happening when I don't see it coming.

So I sent Anto a tell and he was like "this isn't a social LS. This is an event LS. It's rude to the other LS members when you're chatting about whatever you're doing and they're sacrificing their time to be at the event."

You know what? I actually get that line of logic. It may sound crazy to you non MMO-ers, but getting people to show up for events is challenging. So I understand that. I guess it was rude, or at least thoughtless and careless, of me to do that. So I apologized.

That wasn't good enough. I was still out of the LS.

So at this point, I was already resolved to write this article. But I talked it over with the Mrs., and she said I should really give it time to think it over. Maybe try to reconcile.

Saturday morning, I went to an event with BotD's sister shell, "Beacon." Actually I went to two events: Einherjar and Dynamis. All told it took up about 6 hours of my Saturday. It was plenty of fun. Part of the reason I went was to have an opportunity to interact with Antonioklaus. That morning I sent him a tell.

Tonelico: Hey man, can I talk to you for a bit?
Antonioklaus: ... ?
Tonelico: Look, I've been thinking it over. And you're right. I was treating BotD like a social LS and that's not what you designed it to be. You're in charge, I get that.
Antonioklaus: ...
Tonelico: I thought about asking if I could re-join, but yeah, maybe I really can't commit to an arduous schedule. Maybe I should just join a social LS.
Tonelico: But what I wanted to tell you is that I understand your decisions, even though I wasn't clear on the rules at the time. And I appreciate, even cherish, the memories I had with the LS. And if you guys ever need a spare WHM, I can come out to help, wouldn't need rewards or anything.
Antonioklaus: ...
Antonioklaus: k. whatever.

what a fucking prick.

Seriously, what is this guy's deal? Has he no emotion? I spent hundreds of hours in front of a computer with my avatar standing next to his avatar, keeping him alive, taking orders from him, working together in harmony to accomplish very difficult feats in the game. Apparently that all means nothing to him. Did he never care about the people in his LS? Or is it just because I blew off 2 "mandatory" events that he now decides that I'm roadkill to him?

I still went through that whole day doing Einherjar and Dynamis. Anto intentionally said nothing to me. Shelbelle asked me a lot of questions since I was becoming "active" again on this inactive shell ... I think she's looking for a reason to boot me from Beacon too. As for Draylo, I talked to him, and he said that he's in agreement with the policy, though he would've expected more communication than what actually happened. Draylo's line of thought is that, if you're in an event LS, you've made a time commitment. If you can't hold to that time commitment, don't be in the LS. That's fair. But let a guy bow out gracefully, don't call him a "weed" and break his pearl. Right? Right.

~~Epilogue~~

I joined a social LS called "Celtic Order." A range of folks in there: some seem to be absolute noobs when it comes to the way the game is played. Others seem to know what's going on. A few of them bitch and moan, but most are very nice and I've gone to some fun, not-at-all mandatory events with them already.

A lot of old friends from BotD have seen me running around, and I've gotten the question from over a dozen people now: "hey, are you still in BotD?" Invariably I tell them a truncated version of what you've read here. And 100% of the time, I get more than mere sympathy. I hear them saying that Anto's attitude has gotten worse and worse lately.

Most importantly, I heard this from Hellick. Hellick apologized to me; he told me he couldn't help but feel at fault for my being kicked from the LS. How so? Hellick said the "missing mandatory events is grounds for kicking a member" rule was developed rather recently because of Hellick. Hellick had been camping a 24 hour NM (that means the monster only appears once every 24 hours and Hellick wanted the item that dropped from him). For weeks Hellick kept an eye out for that stupid monster, because he really wanted whatever it dropped. As such, he missed a bunch of events. The "minus 25 point" rule I had remembered was increased to "minus 250 points" for Hellick. Hellick told Anto "look, I'm never gonna get anything from most events anyway, you can take all the points away you want." Anto's reply? "Should I take away your Linkpearl too then?" Anto didn't make good on that threat, perhaps because he knows Hellick is a totally badass player, and probably 10x more active, and more useful, than I am. But at that point Hellick did start making an effort to go to mandatory events.

In any case, all this happened while I was not playing the game, and not going to some outdated message board to try and keep up on the new policies put into place.

Hellick told me that Anto has a group of cronies who have made it their job in life to parrot everything Anto says. When people miss an event now, everyone jumps down said person's throat. That line that someone gave me, "I only know about such-and-such NM" has apparently been used dozens of times in the last two months when someone in LS chat talks about anything other than the LS event. It's become a fucking nazi camp. No one can have fun there anymore. It's just strict, by-the-book event bullshit. When I joined the LS in 2006, I knew Anto was bossy, but even he wouldn't lead like that. Something's happened to him. Hellick has made that conclusion as quickly as I have, if not quicker. Others have too. I could name plenty more people, but Hellick was the most vocal about it.

So yeah, now Lauralanthalasa and I are steadily plowing through CoP (on 3-3 now) and I'm trying to keep current on WotG missions and the new Abyssea expansion. If I were still in BotD I'd probably try to hit up two or three "mandatory events" per month without lotting a single item, just to show my support. Fortunately, the "Friend List" menu in the game allows me to see the online status of most of the people I knew from the LS anyway, so I guess I just get to be an ex-BotD member. All in all it hasn't affected the way I play much.

What it has done is made me realize just how awful people can become over a game. I just wrote a 4000-word post about it, and that's probably a testament to how the game has made me a less reasonable, likeable person. But for however much the game has warped me, the problem is found exponentially intensified among people like Anto and Shel. I love playing this MMO, but God help me and may my wife be quick to call me out if I ever started acting like them.

...I am so not ready for FINAL FANTASY XIV.