The title has absolutely no bearing on the subject matter of this post, but I thought I'd throw it out there. Everytime they say "biscuit" instead of cookie I think to myself "Stupid, buscuiting Brits!". But I digress.

Actually, one thing I hate more than Brits is fruit flies. And, apparently, they hate me too. They've been trying to kill me lately. Over the last two weeks they've sent suicide bombers down my windpipe and up my esophagus. It's really pissing me off. I'll be happily watching Next Gen or something, there'll be a faint "bzzztt" followed by the nast coughing fits. Burn in Hell, fruit flies, burn in hell.

Finished with my Pokemon game I decided to have some fun. That's right, I hacked my save file. Actually, I'm thinking of selling the game off and picking up Puzzle League. As much as I still think it's a bastardization of Tetris Attack (which I've been playing like crazy as of late) the thought of ranked online matches is a sweet morsel I may not be able to pass up. Maybe I'll just stick with Tetris DS for now. Maybe I should stop buying games.

At least until Eternal Sonata comes out ;-)

I hated Pokemon when it was cool to own five million pounds of various Pokemon related merch. I always thought it was dumb, Japanesey, and over-hyped. Things that over merchandise always piss me off. But that is not the point of this article. I'm just giving my prior stance.

I picked up Diamond a few weeks ago because I needed something to play. Jeff has a copy of Pearl so I figured I could also play him when I move out to Florida. I will say that m experience was better than I expected it would be, but if you are a die hard RPG fan it will not satisfy your apetite.

Though it is classified as such, Pearl/Diamond is not much of an RPG. It shares many aspects that are common to the genre such as battles, leveling up, world exploration and such, but it lacks the one thing that makes Final Fantasy games the best RPGs ever: story. The game opens with you and your buddy suddenly waking up and deciding to become Pokemon trainers. A certai Dr. Rowan gives you your Pokedex and you are given your primary mission of filling it with all sorts of info on exoctic Pokemans. As you traverse the globe of Sinnoh you stop by local gyms to obtain badges which allow you to progress through the game.

Being a grinding game you'll be seeing a lot of the battle screen. Entering battle combines the two most common elements of RPGs: random encounters and visible ones (a la Mario RPG). The random encounters only happen in caves, water, and the "tall grass". Dotted along the rest of the map are various peoples who, without asking your permission before hand, decide to do battle when you enter their line of sight. These are all rather easy and trite and more of a nuasance than anything.

Almost all battles are one on one making leveling up more than one or two of your Pokemon difficult and lengthy at best. One thing that really pissed me off were the stupid messages. Every time anything happens there's a message announcing it. "It's still raining", "Biscuit used Metal Claw", "Fire Anus's health was drained", "It's not effective". This drags out an already slow paced game. One thing that I found amusing/annoying in particular were the "effectiveness" messages. It's tell you your attack wasn't effective and then your enemy would proceed to die.

One thing this game is definitely not selling itself on are visuals or audio. The map is a combination of 3D environment with 2D sprites. The battle effects are probably the best looking parts of this game but still don't compare the Final Fantasy VI (keep in mind that game is 13 years old and was made for the Super Nintendo). Music is meh. Hummable but not memorable. The sound effects suck ass. You can always tell when a Pokemon was from the original game because it's little battle cry would be a series of Gameboyesque beeps. It's really sad when the dev team is too lazy to rerecord the sounds for better hardware. It sounds really stupid and out of place.

So I've been pretty harsh up to now. I wasn't throughly impressed but I was mildly entertained. I don't know if I'll continue to play now that I've finished that game (there are more quests and, of course, grinding). About the only replay value this game offers is through net play. But you'll have to know some people with the game and do the appropriate friend code swapping. Overall I give the game a 5/10.

As you may recall a few months back I released unto the world my envisioning of an NES Guitar Hero commercial. If I recall correctly I complained about directing my younger brothers in the video. Well, I guess I can quit complaining... because now they're international movie stars!

This is taken from the pages of Ngamer Magazine (Brazil Edition) and was kindly sent in by YouTuber, muzinfa (thanks, bro). It's quite awesome that somebody was tickled enough to put it in their publication but the fact that it also crossed the language barrier is doubley sweet.

I'm not dead, I swear. Okay, it's only been a few days. I did make a comic for Monday, though I hate it. Art's not bad, but... ugh.

However, this is not the reason I am posting. Nay! I've completed what is probably my best work since my Maya picture. Interestingly enough it started out as a practice sketch, working on form and stuff. A few embellishments later it's a pretty cool sketch. Many hours, a few hair and grass tutorials later and it's this:

One thing I'll say about it is I love the colors. It's bright and cheerful. I'm really happy with it over all.

I may post a comic later today, but maybe I won't. Last night I got everything drawn, scanned, colored, etc. and when it came to writing down the dialog I realized the joke was not funny. So, I will give you guys the artwork I drew instead because I still like that. Well, I like how I drew Wedge, anyways.

I didn't take out the text bubbles so you, my readers, can use your wild imaginations and pretend there is writing in them and that it is funny.