Rundown

I had a long post, but I deleted it. Some things are best left unsaid.

This weekend held a great deal of media consumption. Caught up on nearly all of Y the Last Man, read part of Chiaroscuro (and there's a reason I read only part of it), read the first volume of Fable, and read through another section of Wicked. I can't wait to finish that book. I picked up issue 1 of Fell and Doktor Sleepless, and the first volume of Ex Machina (sorry HeavyInk, I couldn't hold out). I tried reading The Trial (Kafka), but I just wasn't in the right headspace for it.

Also, I've gone through a good chunk of the Showtime show Dexter, which I absolutely have to write a review for. The fact that these writers can make me sympathize and cheer for an antisocial serial killer (and when I say anti-social I don't mean unsocial, withdrawn, or introverted - I mean that he's a sociopath) left me amazed. Behold, the power of good writing. You can be turned into someone who roots for the pinnacle of an evil persona.

Anyway, I'm going to review all of those things.

On a completely different topic, I made a post recently about this whole Gertsmann kerfuffle in the gaming industry. It got worse. I, being a complete whore for drama that does not include me, am savoring this like a prisoner long-starved for sunlight waking on the rooftops of Santorini. There was once a point in my callow youth that I would flare and blog and blog and blog about these issues. I've said my piece. Now to smile as the claws unfurl like banners of war.

And as a sidenote about ethics and money in reviewing, this article has proven itself interesting.

Nobody Left to Trust

Bullshit like this is why I tend to only trust reviews from Penny Arcade.

The quick and dirty summary. Fact has it that Eidos made a game called Kane and Lynch, and paid many kilo-dollars to GameSpot (subsidary of CNet Networks) for extensive advertising. Fact also has it that Jeff Gerstmann gave this game a poor review, with a detailed explanation to the faults he found within said game. Then two events occurred, in quick succession: one, Eidos pulled said stacks of kilo-dollars from GameSpot and promised to pledge their future giga-dollars elsewhere; two, Gerstmann was fired.

Now, I'm no scientist... wait, yes I am. Well, an engineer, but I've done my fair share of science. As a scientist, at best I could pull a correlation here. (As a philosopher who would sell their soul to have a drink with Hume, I couldn't pull anything that wasn't directly linked to an emotional need for order within my universe, but I'm ignoring that portion of me.) All the same, Gerstmann's inability to comment leaves my head hanging in sadness. Of course management said something about the story (something that completely contradicts the simple data flow of modus ponens) but being who I am I inherently distrust anybody with power. And as my friend Jason said, "coincidental is just another way of saying zomgconspiracy."

I can't trust GameSpot. I can kind of trust 1up; at least as of two years ago they were a great team. I can't... well, I've never trusted IGN so we won't even go there. The joke is that "you can't spell 'ignorant' without IGN" and I hold to that. Really, the only reviewers I stand behind are the guys at Penny Arcade. I just wish they posted more reviews.