Finished Gears of War recently and have been going through GRAW 2... um, sorry, I mean Rainbow Six: Vegas. I'm kinda pissed that they start you in Mexico like last year's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter. Hopefully the setting gets less dull when you get to Vegas (which I just got to). Big deal if my men get killed. I wanna run down the strip and invert-rappel-headshot some terrorists.

And now that the Wii's out, I have nothing to look forward to, game-wise, until like February. That's when Bioshock and Forza Motorsport 2 should be coming out, to say nothing of Alan Wake and Crysis. Am I missing anything? We're not expecting Mass Effect until the Earth plunges into the Sun, right?

November 28, 2006

Phew, made it. Yes, the Wii is wonderful. If Microsoft has the most online console and Sony has the most FMV-friendly console, Nintendo surely has the best party console. Wii Sports bowling could put entire bowling alleys out of business it's so much fun. I'd recommend you go and buy one, but that's a rather cruel thing to say. Nobody can buy one, unless you're willing to fork over eBay money to get one. Wait it out if you can (oh, and get those component cables before they're all gone).

Update: Going to be a little late again. Damn that Wii is addictive. Check back on Tuesday (or else).

Gears of War is finally on the scene. It's almost as good as the reviews describe it (a 9.6 at GameSpot is practically unheard of). The graphics are outstanding, there's no load times, and the feel of the game is supremely polished. The only complaints you can level against it are that the difficulty swings up and down wildly, plus it's a little on the short side (and this coming from a guy who has no problem with short games). Just in the nick of time, too. Next week I'll be completely obsessed with the Wii, having paid it all off yesterday. If there isn't a comic up next week, you'll know why.

I want you to know that choosing between doing this comic and playing Final Fantasy XII was agonizing. I almost made the "wrong" choice. Here's what I wrote on my official blog... that any of you can find if you have even the faintest experience with Google.

I'm really overjoyed to be able to say that Final Fantasy XII is the best game I've played in a long time. Had I known exactly how good it was going to be before it came out I might have died from waiting. It is so good, in fact, that I can bear to forgive its unforgivable sins. Let me cover those first, since I prefer complaining before complimenting.

FFXII's most unforgivable sin is that it has a third person camera with no invert options. You know how every other game in existence has a "flip X/Y" toggle in case you want the camera to move left when you move the joystick right? This game doesn't have that option. The options menu is only one screen long, and they have the inane "shake camera" option that I've never seen in action, but nothing to change the (by my standards) backwards camera movement. You just have to get used to it. Very frustrating.

The other sin pales in comparison to the game-wide camera sin, but it still ticks me off. When you first meet the main character, Vaan, he is whacking rats in a sewer. Not "things that look like rats," but real rats in a real sewer. I couldn't believe it... I wondered if I had accidentally bought Everquest Online Adventures for my PS2 or something. It's as if Square Enix wants to show you how bad things could be if someone else was at the helm of this franchise.

That's about it for the big sins. The only other annoyance I have with this game is that the items in the primary menu should be in a different order, but I won't badger them about that (especially because the rest of the interface is an absolute triumph of ingenuity and usability). Oh, and the low level magic spells look really lame. That'll cover it.

The one... umm... what's the opposite of a sin? A mitzvah? Sure. The one big mitzvah they do that I wish more companies would emulate (it's really easy, folks) is how the game starts up. When you put in the disc it starts playing a video: first you see a cool airship flying through the sky, then the screen goes white and there's the Square Enix logo, then we're back to the airship again, this time flying towards an awesome hovering city. Then it goes through a montage of other videos from the game. You can press a button at any time to get a simple "NEW GAME/LOAD GAME" menu overlaid at the bottom of the video. No three level Publisher/Developer/Dolby videos you have to press START to get through, just a gorgeous video with some soothing music that you can skip at any time if you're impatient. The effect on the player is to say, "we're so confident our game kicks ass that we don't have to bend over backwards to satisfy our 'partners' and annoy you with their logos." It's a good feeling.

So, what's the deal with this new Final Fantasy? It is absolutely unlike every other Final Fantasy title that comes before it, despite how it collects elements from previous games and sprinkles them about. And by "previous games," I mean my two favorite titles, Final Fantasies IV and VI. The opening movie music and many royal themes come almost lock, stock and barrel from the marches in IV. The moogles, espers, and magicite (!) come from fond memories of VI. And then, uh, there's the entire world and scenario that comes from Tactics Advance, but I'll just ignore that for now.

The basic plot, unfortunately, also comes from Final Fantasy VI. In number twelve here, the Arcadian Empire conquers the kingdom of Dalmasca. You play as Vaan, a street urchin in Dalmasca's capital city of Rabanastre, whose goal in life is to reduce the number of syllables in his hometown.

No, that's what I wish it was about. Vaan wants to be a sky pirate, and eventually gets caught up with the Resistance movement when it turns out Dalmasca's princess is still alive. Based on what I've seen so far, I'm not certain this plot summary is going to hold for long. The two princes of the "evil" Arcadian Empire are nice. Really nice. Nice and honorable and really overly handsome, even if one of them looks a lot like Seymour from FFX and the other one can't be older than sixteen. Aside from the whole "conquer Dalmasca" part, the Empire hasn't done anything that bad. Sure, the guards push you around a bit, but that's to be expected. Usually they get more evil as you go up the chain of command, but that's not the case this time. I wonder if the Judges might be the real bad guys, considering how badass they look when they all march in line.

The gameplay is the biggest shocker: it's real time and plays like a hybrid between Dungeon Siege and World of Warcraft. With the "gambit" option turned on, you can program simple little macros for your characters, like "Attack nearest enemy" or "Heal ally with less than 70% health." Stack them in the proper order and you can take your hands off the controller for most battles. There's no combat screen; everything takes place in the map you run though, making it a very smooth and seamless procedure.

I'm certain a lot of people hate this change, but given the game environment it makes perfect sense. The prior games were about three or four characters taking on a heterogeneous group of three to five monsters at a time. Now the monster count is usually two at a time, plus they're all typically the same type. If you had to press X to confirm each attack command for each character to each monster, the encounter rate would seem horrifically high (and you'd be bored out of your mind). Now you just worry about arranging your gambits properly and exploring every inch of the map. I adore it, also probably because I can lift weights with one hand and play the game with the other. Maybe I shouldn't be telling you that.

Another oddity is that the monsters don't drop money anymore. Now, as in World of Warcraft, they drop items like wolf pelts or succulent fruit or earth stones. Those items are called, yes, "loot" and are sold to merchants for gil, the game's currency. This certainly adds to the realism, but why is it that, when at the merchant, there's no button for "sell all loot"? This stuff is useless, designed only for conversion into money, and yet they make you select each one and press a few buttons to confirm the sale. If those things were used to synthesize items I could imagine not selling one or two, but it's all junk, so where's the "sell junk" button?

The leveling system has also been completely redesigned. You still get experience points and level in the normal fashion, but all your weapons, armor, and magic upgrades are governed by the "License Board." It's basically a big chessboard that you unlock by buying tiles adjacent to ones you've already bought. Anybody who's played FFX will feel right at home here; it's a logical extension of the Sphere Grid from that game. Monsters drop one or two license points and you save up and buy upgrades to your stuff. The problem here is that everybody starts in the same place on the board, so there's no big difference between the characters. You want Vaan to be a white mage and Ashe to be an archer? Doing it that way or having Vaan be a barbarian and Ashe a black mage are equally effective. I suppose this lends more flexibility to the characters and replayability for the game itself, but I prefer slightly more rigid roles.

By far the biggest selling point of this game, so big that it dominates the back of the box, is the plot. Despite the "resistance vs. empire" theme, the writing has never been better in... really, any game I've ever seen. Adults act like adults, not children in bigger bodies. There is a seriousness that pervades everything: nobody winks at the camera, breaks the fourth wall, or generally acts like a jackass. It sure helps that the voice acting is absolutely flawless. Well, okay, they pronounce the word "marquis" like "mar-kwiss", but otherwise I have absolutely no complaints. I'm dying to get to the next story point, which is tough because the outdoor combat is so much fun.

If any game deserved four stars, this is it. It's long, it's beautiful, it's made for adults and seamlessly blends multiple genres into a solid set. That it costs $50 is a huge bargain. Unless you're a mini-game aficionado (there are none to be found), you should pick this one up.

So, Dark Messiah is a huge failure. I've never experienced a buggy game before in my life - Half-Life 2 ran fine, X3: Reunion was smooth sailing, and lag only got worse for me in World of Warcraft as time went on. But I've had three unexpected crash to desktops, lots of audio lockups, and just plain bugginess from enemies and physics calculations. Did they really need to get this thing out before the rest of the holiday rush?

Still, there are some good parts. The feel of your character is wonderful. He runs, tilts, and fights more like a real person than a steady-cam sitting in front of a sword. The magic is nice. At least, the fire and frost spells work as advertized and do some damage. I'd love to test out lightning but I keep dying every time I get anywhere. Health potions are few and far between, as is advice to learn the healing spell. But I'll stick with it. Once the bugs are ironed out this'll be a quality title. Nothing I love more than paying to be a beta tester.

Two days away and FFXII and Carbon can't come fast enough.

I have to say it. Sam and Max: Culture Shock is not funny. There are no laughs to be had. I see the term "deadpan" raised like a shield against the game's detractors; it tears like tissue paper against the opposing argument. It thinks it's funny. Certainly, everything you can click on has a formulaic setup>spin>punchline joke to go along with it, but the voice acting kills all attempts at comedy. Get Smart was deadpan. This is just dead. Thank god for Gametap so I don't have to explicitly shell out ten bucks for that mistake.

Ah, the holiday season is upon us. I can find no greater sign of this than the rush of video games to the shelves. This week brings us Bully (free from Jack Thompson's evil clutches), which I'm getting both because of the political statement it makes and also because I have a Bully t-shirt that would go to waste. After Double Agent comes NFS: Carbon, FFXII, then Guitar Hero II, Gears of War... on and on and on.

I can't believe I actually intend to buy all of those things. Um, send money?

Has everyone seen the South Park episode featuring World of Warcraft? And if you haven't, there a zillion game sites that you clearly aren't visiting. Myself, I thought it was alright. Not nearly as revealing as the show introducing Towelie, where the boys hunt for their Okama GameSphere, but full of some good laughs. It's clear Blizzard gave them access to the character models in order to do the animation, but I wonder why all the inaccuracies? This isn't WoWInsider, of course, but lots of things really stuck out. A human hunter killing anything at Jerad's landing? Not just non-consented PVP, but same-faction PVP? And the boars bit was completely impossible...

I think that I just gave up my reproductive rights for at least a month for that little tirade. Anybody else read Sundiver or Startide Rising? No?

Moving on. I've been watching Tenjho Tenge and am slowly starting to get into it. I say "slowly" because the show crests and ebbs so frequently that it's hard to get into a real groove with it. Right now I'm on episode 10, listening to Maya Natsume spend 30 minutes talking about backstory and not even getting halfway done when the episode ends. Guh. It's a little like DBZ's endless powerup sequences, just with people who act slightly more human.

Still, I love the chilly Masataka and anytime Maya calls Nagi "koso" (boy). Hopefully they'll have a reason to smile on disc four.

Netflix is such a liar. Turns out My HiME isn't actually a four disc series. It's four discs in the same manner that Vandread was four discs: the first four make you think there's an ending, when in reality it promises to get worse after the first "fake" ending. Everything appears to be wrapped up by the end of episode #16, but then the freaky little kid says... well, something idiotic, that's for sure. Oh well. May as well see where else there's going with this otherwise admirable series.

Still playing Okami when I get a chance. Have you bought this game yet, PS2 owners? You won't want to get caught without it at any convention of haute gamers. This game is the next Shadow of the Colossus, but far easier to play and with less framerate and camera issues. Money well spent, I'm telling you.

We (and by "we" I mean "not me") finished Kingdom Hearts II this weekend. I feel very conflicted. On the one hand it's extremely long, with lots of, um, superficial variety and stunning effect graphics. The combat system looks very interesting, even though it's actually quite shallow. But when you're not hitting the X button madly your character, Sora (... Donald, Goofy) is saying the stupidest things. The final encounter was the usual inane "why do you hate those of us who are on the edge of darkness" psychobabble. So now I'm debating returning the game for credit, or locking it up as a hidden masterpiece of the Playstation 2. Like I said, I'm conflicted.

Not much time to chat today. Maybe you've heard of this game called Okami. It's for the PS2. Here's a test to see whether you'll like Okami or not.

Question one: Do you own a PS2?

Question two: Have you ever eked even the smallest bit of enjoyment out of a Zelda title?

If you've answered yes both questions, run to your local EB Games and pick up a copy of Okami. You will not be disappointed. No no, don't read any reviews, look at any screenshots, or especially watch any videos of the game. Just go buy it. And if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to Okami.

Alrighty, so only one person is interested in banners. Fine. Is there anything I can provide that you would want (aside from more/faster comics)? Lemme know.

What have I been doing this week? I wish I could remember. Must have been watching Vandread again. As I get slightly older I'm looking back at my previous anime shows and finding hidden depth. With Vandread I'm finding the hook that kept me entranced the first time around. It's a great show, but it's basically a video game on TV. Watching the ships dart around with their exaggerated contrails reminds me of my favorite RTS game, Homeworld. Plus the on-ship action is something genuinely new: males and females have lived apart and fought for a hundred years, so they are quite terrified of each other. This compares to a show like DearS, where the men are terrified of the women, regardless of what their libido is telling them.

I've been getting back into my old anime habit lately. It feels great; games are fun and all, but when's the last time you cried while behind a gamepad? And no, don't tell me it was when you lost the epic loot roll in Blackrock Spire. As for me, I'm tootling around Desolace on Aggramar. I wish I knew why that place attracted me so. It's... desolate. Gray ground, gray skies, unfriendly centaurs, earth-shaking Kodo beasts, and more demons than you can shake a Paladin at. But I feel like some kind of holy crusader while I'm there, projecting radiant light into the dark, foggy mists of that sorrowful place. If you happen to stop by on a weekend you'll probably see me. Just /who Desolace; if you can't spot my character you shouldn't be reading this comic.

What was I talking about? Oh yes: anime. Recently it's been the show My HiME. I wonder if anyone else has seen this? It happens to be yet another schoolgirls fighting demons comedy/tragedy, but the quality is really surprising. When Mai reunites with her brother, you can feel the love. There's great magical summoning/twirling, and some nice laughs and non-canon nudity on the sidelines. I'd post some clips on Google Video, but I dunno if that's legal (it certainly looks like copyrighted material to me, even though I don't intend to put up more than 30 seconds at a time).

I don't know if anybody else is interested, but I got an e-mail recently from someone wanting instructions on how to use The Villain's banner to link to this site. Certainly that code is fairly straightforward to produce, but wouldn't a customized, Made-Just-For-You banner be cooler? If you want one, just send me an e-mail with your favorite line from my comics and what you want in the banner (also the size). I'll whip one up for you as thanks for your kind words.

Ah, to be back. To truly go away and have a nice vacation. To depart.

Sorry... entered thesarus mode there for a second. Yes, The Villain is back. Having ample time to clear my head, get a real job, settle in that job, get a few bonus checks, travel to PAX and have a blast and buy an Xbox 360 makes me a better person. Or if not, then not.

The good news for you, dear readers? As you may have noticed from the Chapter photo, we have a real plot to get on with! I know, or have a good idea about, the next few chapters of the story. That's probably reason #2 why I quit earlier: I really ran out of steam. I had no idea where I was going with my favorite characters, and it would kill me to become the thing I hate most.

Here's how you can do your part to keep The Villain going: keep me honest. I won't lie, I've been away from this stuff a while. Although they say the greatest test is to make something you yourself think is funny, that's easy to determine. What I need is guidance in case I get off track. Don't let me get political. Don't let things get too nonsensical. Don't let me tell lame jokes (really)! Don't let me ramble on and on and on and... *thwack!*

Just like that. So anyway...

Yes, what is it, Savannah?

We're back, baby.

Tired of checking this site every day for updates? So am I! When will that lazy bastard get off his butt and... oh... wait. That's me. Right.

So my extended vacation has turned into more of a coma. Typical of me, I know. So I'm not going to make any grand plans for a The Villain restart. I know myself well enough by now not to jerk you guys and girls around. Is there an actual ending to The Villain? Yes, though I'm keeping it to myself for now. I'd love to do more, I want to do more, but my main hobby of gaming is getting in the way. And when November 22 rolls around it's only going to get worse.

Some things to remember:

1. I love my fans
2. I love my comic and the characters within
3. The entire plot, from beginning to end, has been traced quite accurately by Savannah
4. Kavian knows how it will end, and has said so once or twice
5. "You die, and we all move up in rank"

Seems like everyone has something to say on Advent Rising. I'm tired, so I'll be brief.

I found Gamespot's review to be overly critical, but they got the bad points right. Technically, this game is a barely playable nightmare. The animation has barely any inbetweening, the frame rate is just atrocious 60% of the time, and many of the cinematics look exactly like the beginning of a UT match where you can fly around using the mouse and keyboard. Go to the official boards and laugh at the madmen who hold this game aloft on a golden pedestal. They must be the ones who keep telling everyone how high they are while on Live.

Still, the game doesn't deserve a 5.4 rating. The combat, when it's smooth, is a lot of fun. The guns pack quite a wallop, and the vaunted "flick targeting" is actually pretty good once you get used to it. Also, I love the way Gideon reloads any gun. He is the ultimate badass: he just spins it in his hand and poof, reloaded. The future is awesome if we get to reload guns like that.

The graphics in this game aren't a masterpiece, but their scale is very impressive. When you're told to find your girlfriend in the science labs at the other end of the space station, you get to walk all the way over there in real (albiet choppy) time. Lots of fun.

My evenings this week have been consumed with World of Warcraft and Psychonauts. In Azeroth I'm a level 41 mage, finding myself bankrupt every time I go to the Auction House to... umm, windowshop. No brown mare for me; I can barely afford the teleportation runes I use to get there (and griffon fare to get back). So I find myself spending more and more time in the Valley of Bones in Desolace, fighting skeletons who drop an awful lot of silk for the threadbare shorts they wear. It's a living.

Psychonauts, as you may have heard, is a wonderful game. The demo didn't sell me: it seemed like a regular platformer with "Hey Arnold!" character designs and a cliched WWII landscape. It also didn't help that the PC and Xbox versions had different, though significant, sets of bugs.

The full game, though, is a joy to play. Call it Mario 64 on acid, if you like; it's a keeper. Though the humor isn't 100% all the time, you'll find a bunch of laugh-out-loud moments as well as a little love story that manages to be more plausible than the dreck they're calling Revenge of the Sith (yeah, I'm still bitter). If you've ever double-jumped before, you've gotta pick up Psychonauts. Get past Coach Oleander's Basic Braining, and you'll be hooked.

Also, anybody see Scrapped Princess? Is that show any good?

Note: In honor of Memorial Day and the fact that I'm having some trouble coming up with rhymes, The Villain will publish on an extended schedule this week. See you on Tuesday.

Went to see Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith today, like all good computer nerds should. I found it to be better than I expected, but still a terrible movie. Shall we start with the high points?

The CGI was wonderful. Coming off hours of E3 footage I had forgotten how realistic pre-rendered material could be (*cough* Killzone 2 *cough*). The spaceships look fantastic and I think there is some kind of record for best cloth physics that should be given to this movie. General Grievous and his elite droids had capes that looked amazingly real. There are also some genuine emotions created by this movie. We feel Obi-Wan's disappointment as Anakin falls to the dark side. And seeing the Clone Troopers turn on the Jedi was filled with great despair. Watching Darth Vader be born out of Anakin's charred body was a terrible, joyful sight.

And now the bad. Anakin's relationship with Padme is still the kind of stuff you wouldn't print on greeting cards for fear of seeming too cheesy. Every single line of dialogue in this movie makes you want to close your ears - save, of course, the slimy tongue of Chancellor Palpatine or Obi-Wan (Ewan McGregor does the best with his material that anyone could expect). I will even include Yoda in this assessment: bad grammar will not bad dialogue save.

There are also some severe plot holes as Anakin is seduced to the dark side. His conversations with Palpatine sound like they've been edited for time, much to this film's detriment. And the crucial moment when Anakin chooses to serve Palpatine instead of the Jedi Order felt really hasty. Would sixty seconds of "Oh no what am I going to do?" have been too much to ask?

Still, I did feel a pull to go immediately to Blockbuster and rent Episode VI again to see the interaction between Darth Vader and Obi-Wan Kenobi in this new light. This is where we come in, as they say in the movies.

Also, it seems like my guest comic for 8-bit Theater didn't make the cut. Oh well. "Hand drawn and full color are a plus but not required," eh Brian?

So, the Xbox 360. The game station that will revolutionize the industry... again. I had the pleasure of watching the MTV unveiling, finding it almost entirely devoid of actual news. By this time the images of the console itself were used more as confirmation than revelation. It's gonna be white, fairly slick looking, with wireless controllers, headset and maybe video camera. And a three-core chip and an ATI video card that's at least $500, and you've got one powerful gaming machine. I suppose it's not very surprising that they're launching with the same sort of sequels that the PSP launched with. Project Gotham Racing 3, Ghost Recon 3, the latest game where Tiger Woods hits a ball with a stick...

Yawn. Show me more of this Gears of War stuff. Or a screenshot of Perfect Dark Zero that does not look like complete ass or uncensored fan service (though I'd gladly take that over a Fifth Element makeover for Joanna Dark). Actually, I found one where she's in a courtyard that looked pretty good.

Am I going to buy the console? Of course; I'm a gamer. I paid God knows how much for the PSP, and the only games I like for it are Lumines and Wipeout Pure. Though I gotta give Gates credit for having the balls to plan the release date of Halo 3 to coincide with the launch of the Playstation 3. But really Bill, don't you have better sense than to do a Time magazine cover that makes you look like Locutus of Borg? It's just too easy...

Let's not call it a comeback, shall we? What's the secret to The Villain's return after such a long hiatus? Incessant questioning by fans? Financial bankrupcy? The opposite of that last thing?

No, not really. Although I did have a handful (read: not a handful) of plucky readers ask me where the hell I've been, the credit is not theirs alone to claim. Okay, that was a lie. They can claim total credit. By some stroke of luck I actually remembered how I was going to end this latest comic. Although I have the entire plot mapped out, some of the finer details strike me for a loop sometimes.

What's coming up in Chapter Eleven, the eleventh chapter so far? A big change for everybody's favorite Pixy-Stix carrying thief and some intrigue at the Final Dungeon. If I miss Monday's update, may I be inundated with spanish telemarketer spam. Wierd.

Update:Oh my... I was supposed to update this thing today, wasn't I? Er... see, I can explain. With school over (for now) and little outside obligations (for now), I've been able to start catching up on my videogames. I'm almost at full speed now and, uh, it's hard to stop, sit down, and make a comic for four hours. Something will appear Tuesday, unless I spend Monday night on the dance pad.

So exams are over and students around the world finally get to relax. For me, this means more time spent on World of Warcraft, and less time to spend with my friends and loved ones. Ahh, the balance of nature. Though as a graduate assistant at my school, I'll still be in the lab for hours on end, listening to the phone not ring and the computers not crash. I'm bringing my Gameboy.

Picked up DDR Ultramix 2 for the Xbox. All new songs, all new game modes, and an interface that would make a usability consultant cry (I cried). It's like they hired a graphic artist with no DDR experience, gave him a copy of Photoshop, and broke his monitor. The interface is hideous, hard to navigate, and completely different from the nearly seventeen thousand existing editions of DDR. What were they thinking?

Oh. Switching back to World of Warcraft, allow me to point you to their general forum. The people on here are the worst scum in the galaxy. They're not fit to be locked up in Butcher Bay; the place would rot by the poison of their idiocy. The game hasn't been out a month and these bipeds are calling for nerfing, expansion packs, radical changes to existing game systems, and things that were firmly scrapped during beta. This is the bottom of the barrel, folks.

I spend all day reading it! :-)

Back from the dead! Yes folks, it's time for another session of Villainy (at least while I've got the time). So much has gone on in the gaming world since I've last posted that I barely know where to start.

Perhaps I'll just discuss the recent stuff. Half-Life 2. Oh, what a gem this is. I seriously can't believe I'm playing this game. Seriously. It feels etherial, insubstantial (and not just because I downloaded the game through Steam instead of buying it in a store). It's also the smartest game ever made, with its inventive use of physics. Granted, most of the time you're looking to make a ramp or something for you to walk on, but that's a big leap for first-person shooters.

What really strikes me is the atmosphere. You could call it "1984: The Game" and I would nod along. More than any game since the original Half-Life, I felt like I was playing through an sci-fi action movie. And by the end, I really felt something for Alyx, my female companion. Take that, Far Cry, forcing me to rescue someone I only saw for about three seconds in the intro video.

There's a lot of talk about whether or not Half-Life 2 deserves the title of "Greatest Game of All Time." That's certainly what they were shooting for, with the seamless integration of fantastic graphics, character animation, an honest to goodness story, and real world physics and puzzles. So, should they get it? I say yes: not necessarily on the precise merits of the game itself, but for this question: can you name any other game (since Half-Life 1) that's been this good? I sure can't.

So somebody's finally called me out. Where are new episodes of "The Villain," you ask? They're rumbling around in my head somewhere, trying to get out. Here's the deal. Unlike other web comics that can give you crap every day, my 691,200 pixels of genuine laughter take longer to create and (more importantly) think up. If you study the Archives, you might see a pattern (of sorts). Make comics for three months, declare scheduling issues and stop making them for about two months. Then start up again after a handful of complaints (actually, more like a thimblefull).

Never fear, pop-culture-reference fans. The day shall once again shine down upon those of you with an encyclopedic knowledge of movies, TV, anime, and video games. Just put me in your long-term bookmarks section, along with Old Man Murray and, uh, this website.

Note: The Villain will miss Monday, August 9th in observance of my birth 20+ years ago. It shall return the week after next, when I am rested and suitably, uh, "gifted."

City of Heroes! CoH! Super Evercrack! Yes, friends, I'm addicted to City of Heroes. It's a light addiction, but growing stronger as my character bulks up. I adore this game. It's essentially Diablo online, with super powers. Combat is all you do, but nobody minds. I'm sure you've read the reviews on this game; they're all correct. What I find so liberating is the amount of sheer creativity that went into this game. Whereas Everquest II will give us just a better looking dragon with bump-mapped skin, CoH has flying people, rock throwing powers, and nifty ice and fire spells available from day one. You'll end up keeping and using all of your powers all through the game - what do you say to that, Vivi? Run out and buy this game immediately, even if you hate groups. I solo all day and love it.

Now let's talk about the anime Miami Guns. How shall I put this? This anime sucks, but why am I laughing so hard? The plot completely serves the whim of the moment, as characters behave less and less like we could expect any reasonable human to behave. It's supposed to be the City of Miami, here in Florida. They got only two things right: palm trees, and the fact that citizens will resist a bank robbery by pulling out handguns. The rest of the city is filled with Japanese schoolgirls, mountainside car races, and kanji jokes. Yeah, mountainside races, like in Initial D.

Here's the thing, though. Miami Guns is hysterical. The main character, Yao Sakurakouji, is a nutcase. She's a spoiled rich girl who is, unquestionably, the most selfish person on the planet. In the first episode she knocks out a kidnapper, takes his clothes, and shoots her own police force because the standoff wasn't exciting enough. Yikes. I've never seen anyone like her, and that energy saves the show. So with whom do you pair the reckless rich-bitch? Why, Rei Ayanami, of course. Or, as they choose to call her in this show, Lu Amano. Character description? It's Rei. Sounds like Rei, behaves like Rei. She can be kind of snide, though, and that prevents her from being totally boring.

Seen the first two discs so far. Each episode is a spoof of something, and (surprisingly) a good spoof. I hate to admit it, but Miami Guns is the new Excel Saga. Bow before your comedy master. Just try not to inhale all the cocaine left on the ground by the writers of this show.

Whoops, looks like I forgot to change the date last time. I'm paying attention. No, really, I am.

Slayers fan? Anybody? If so, run to your local web browser and order a copy of Slayers: Premium, the latest (and I believe last) movie in the Slayers series. It stars the TV crew versus some babbling octopi, and is probably the funniest Slayers movie I've seen yet. Short (35 minutes), but fast paced and zany - just how I like 'em. I also rented Lost Universe, which bills itself as a kind of futuristic Slayers (also starring Megumi Hayashibara). Sadly, it doesn't live up, despite some amusing moments. The main character, Kain, is a "Trouble Contractor," just like the original Dirty Pair... is that an homage or theft?

Let's spend a minute to talk about Tales of Symphonia. This may be a biased review, because I've only played about four hours into the game before I returned it in disgust, but Tales sucks. Here's why. The voice acting is alright; the main character is voiced by Robin from Teen Titans, so he knows how to say his lines. That said, the dialogue sucks. This is sub-Grandia-II drivel, translated directly from Japanese with no thought as to how English speakers talk. Oh, how I prayed to find a Japanese language option somewhere in the menus. Problem number two: combat is unnecessary. There's a switch in all the character's AI routines that will set them to "Auto." All you need to do is set the main character from Manual to Auto, and combat proceeds without you doing a single thing. This would be nice for rushing through the game if, say, the dialogue made me want to continue. And the plot itself? As I said, "the Chosen One must regenerate the Tree of Mana to save the world." The "surprises" in the game are telegraphed with wide, wild gestures. The main character has never met his real parents, the Chosen herself is descended from Angels, and nobody in your party really seems willing to talk about their background. I think I'm just getting sick of the "standard fare" plot.

What about Suikoden 3? Can anybody recommend that?

Games, games, anime. Is there nothing else to post on this front page? ... No, there really isn't. Let's move on. Riddick for the Xbox gets better and better. I'm now in the mines, breezing past double-max security. Some Jagger Vance fellow is waiting to get his neck broken by yours truly. It's very rare to meet a character in Riddick with whose brains you're not supposed to decorate the walls.

Also picked up Tales of Symphonia for the 'Cube, RPG-starved gamer that I am. The graphics are crisp, but nothing that they couldn't achieve on the PS2. Voice acting is remarkably decent; the main character "Lloyd" seems to know that he's getting paid more than anyone else, but nobody is morosely reading lines. I hope I can stomach the plot, though. "The Chosen One must regenerate the Tree of Mana to save the world." Ugh. This is the kind of crap that I skewer in my comics. But it does mean one good thing: at least they aren't trying for something crazy and untested. Clichés exist because they're time-tested and they work. It just means the writers are lazy.

Finished watching R.O.D. TV and the first disc of Magical Shopping Arcade Abenoboshi. ROD is consistently amazing, walking straight into and through anime school-girl clichés. I adore Anita and her tomboy ways. It seems to be an unavoidable thing, however, that the loudest girl in class (Anita) must be paired up with the simpering, Misao-chan-from-Magical-Project-S type. Feh. Still, a delight through and through.

Abenoboshi, from the deranged minds at Gainax, is a shot at Excel Saga that really misses its mark. I can't put my finger on what's wrong, exactly, but that show is just not as funny as it thinks it is. The NC-17 material (urination into space, lots of nearly exposed breasts and briefly exposed buttocks) is totally unnecessary, even for perverts who dig that kind of thing in a non-porn anime. I'll pass on the rest. Just wake me when Invader Zim DVD 2 comes out.

Have you checked out the Cast & Crew page recently? Lyssie's role has been revealed, along with a short paragraph of the style she brings to her job. She will begin work in earnest in about two comics.

The Chronicles of Riddick just came in for the Xbox. All the glowing reviews are absolutely right: this game is staggeringly good. It's everything Enter the Matrix wasn't: fantastic graphics, a real story, a arguably charismatic lead character. The only problem I have is that Riddick is too much of a badass for me. He walks into a room and the goal says "Kill the guard." I'd rather not. The guard isn't doing anything to me. Maybe if I just wait here long enough, the doctor will show up. Still, an awesome game.

Sitting next to me are DVDs for Witch Hunter Robin, Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi, and Ninja Scroll. I'm already familiar with Robin, but the other two are uncharted territory.

Happy Independence Day, everybody! Yesterday was the day we celebrated our victory over the evil space bugs that blew up the White House. I loved that movie.

What's new on the waterfront? Two new animes you simply must run out and rent this minute. All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku, the TV series, is finally being properly published, and it's wonderful. All the anime stereotypes you know and (I, anyway) despise are here, with shameless titles such as "Snobby Rich Girl" and "Nihilistic Pretty Boy." I'm staying away from Nuku Nuku Dash, which looks like a perfectly clear perversion of an innocent show. The obsequious mother figure in this first TV series is even funnier if you've watched the questionable OVAs.

Anime number two is R.O.D., the TV. That's what they call it, so I'll go by the official nomenclature. It's a fantastic adaptation of the movie/OVA (?) to a TV series, with three interesting Paper Masters. They get five - five! - changes of clothes in the first episode alone! Plus the lady they're supposed to protect is a real bitch, though eventually lovable. The action scenes haven't been neglected, although there's only really two, near the end of the first episode. Still, it's soooo much better than Giant Robot Love Triangle Comedy Show #12, fearlessly brought to you by ADV.

I haven't done anything with my "Blue Steel" design since last week. It's there, sitting in a Photoshop .PSD, collecting dust. Maybe you think I should move ahead with it?

Whew, good to be back. It's been a fun two months away... I'll not bore you with it. Info on the stuff you care about: The Villain is back on its old schedule, once a week on Monday. I've taken this breather time to write some comics, chart the story, and, uh... beat Ninja Gaiden about eleven times. Expect what you've always expected, and you'll probably get it. I'm still toying with a redesign... it looks very cool, but I just don't know if it's the right face for The Villain. This comic was founded on three beliefs: 1) Always end with a punchline, 2) Always explain any in-jokes, and 3) Make it easy to navigate the site. I've never been too cool for school, but this new "Blue Steel" design might not let people read my comic good. I'll let you know how it turns out, Walter Cronkite.

You might also want to change your bookmarks. InsanityInk.com will still work for quite some time, but The Villain has its own domain at www.thevillain.net. Hopefully it's a little easier to remember.

Gearing up for finals week here at FSU. For me, that means I scramble to finish a paper by Monday and then... uh... well, hang around until grad school kicks in. And hope my sublease comes through. If not, then hooray, more debt.

This is your, um, two month notice: I've begun plans to turn InsanityInk.com into something other than what you see now. Like many webcomics, I can't do this forever. I'm moving into a semblance of a professional life and need to focus my energy on other things, like jobs and women (of which I have neither). I'm looking at moving to a roomy hosting plan at 1and1 hosting, and trading my Cold Fusion skills for PHP. If and when I do, I promise that I'll still keep all the comics archived somewhere for your enjoyment.

Or I might not do that at all. Who knows; I can be amazingly apathetic when it comes to change. In the mean time, might as well enjoy it while it's here.

What a great empty pit I have to call home. I can count my furniture on one Simpsons hand: bed, desk, TV stand. Stark as it is, I couldn't be happier. No other human being lives within these walls. The fridge is mine alone. The washing machine throws grand maul seizures just for me. My plan to exterminate humanity is progressing nicely... oooh, probably should have left that last one out.

Sunday was move in celebration day, which somehow translates to Dance Dance Revolution. Anyone out there with a pad knows what it's like when you perform a song on Standard or Heavy and then your friends try any one foot song on Light. It was depressing and motivating, two emotions I don't often mix. We laughed long and hard, at a sushi dinner, then again at my apartment.

<vent>Later, I had the delightful experience of driving home one of my drunk friends. I guess it was the beer talking, but he started on this "Do you know who you are?" tirade. I've played this game before, so I kept my mouth shut and frankly told him "no" when he asked if I knew what he was talking about. Best I could figure, he wanted to tell me that he'd been in the outside world, that things didn't work the way I thought they would, and that my skills as a programmer wouldn't earn me more than a living wage. My Southwestern training restrained me from telling him exactly how little I knew about the outside world from knocking on doors for a summer (and other things, like why you shouldn't argue with people). So in summary, I met my first angry drunk.</vent>

Okay, so nobody took me up on an opportunity to host stuff here for no reason. No big deal. I have bigger problems now. Leasing and subleasing and fines and fines and fines. I'm getting a new apartment: the money's down, too late for backsies. My sister, meanwhile, needs a place to stay for the summer. I can't give her my place, because my roommate's a guy (more specifically: a jerk). So if she took over my sublease, she'd have to move to this smaller apartment in my complex, pay as much as I do ($200 more than her new roommates would), and climb three flights of stairs to get to her door. I'm actually all for that, but someone just called me about my sublease, meaning I could give my place legitimately to this guy and then find a better place for my sister. Oh, and call up every bozo advertizing their bedroom set in the American Classifieds because my new place is unfurnished and I'll be sleeping on an AeroBed if I don't find one.

My, that was depressing. On to better stuff. I have finished Ninja Gaiden for the third time, and am now going through it again to unlock the original versions. I'm hooked, but I can't bear the thought of clicking "Keep It" at GameFly and paying $40 to have this game forever. I will be strong.

A week of work and entertainment procrastination means I haven't watched any new anime. Boo hoo. Puni Puni Poemy is coming in via Netflix on Tuesday, and I'm stoked. I'm a ravenous fan of the poorly translated import copy, so let's see how well a real studio can keep up with the subtitling.

Eighteen days until May. Very exciting.

Thought I'd publish this comic a trifle early to make up for last week. Summer approaches, uh, y'all, and you may know what that means. It means I'll no longer be burdened down by the weighty restraints of tedius college work. Real work will continue, I hope, during the summer. But distractions should be lower since nobody will be here, especially not my professors. I should be able to ramp up to two comics a week. Let's hope so.

Pandora Tomorrow's multiplayer is scaring me a little. After my initial joyous matches, I realized that to play this properly I'll need a ton of offline experience. So I've been visiting all the maps, poking around for good places to set spy traps (I'm a Mercenary kind of guy). Hard, but thank heaven for a reason for me to keep my subscription to Xbox Live.

On the issue of "Too Much Bandwidth," I'm looking for things to host. The Mac video I posted two months ago drove my traffic through the roof, which I generally consider to be a good thing. I feel like I'm paying for something that I'm not using, otherwise. So, what sounds good? I'd love to post one track from an album in my collection (most don't fall under the jurisdiction of the RIAA, as they're mostly from Japan). But that seems like asking for trouble. So maybe just this amusing thing I found somewhere on the net: Spoilers for Every Movie Ever Made.

I don't normally use quotes from TV shows, but this one fit rather well. Anyhoo, sorry for the delay, ladies and gentlemen. Blame it on me overworking myself in the past week, but hey, here's the comic only two days behind schedule. I have an intense Super Smash Brothers: Melee tournament to prepare for this Saturday, but hopefully it won't slow comic production.

Pandora Tomorrow arrived just minutes ago. I ran through the first single player mission and quickly got bored and frustrated. Hopped on multiplayer and WOW! All the gushing you've heard about this game is 100% true. Spies vs. Mercenaries has the kind of magic that I haven't felt since my first game of Counter-Strike. Of course, I couldn't help testing everybody's favorite bug by sitting in the Optimatch Results screen for more than 10 seconds. Sure enough, it froze up. But Quick Match and Create Match take me to the fun without any problems.

Also finished my first disc of Tenchi Muyo GXP. Ugh. Bleach. BARF! And so on. Even if this wasn't a Tenchi Muyo series I know where it's going, and since it IS Tenchi Muyo it's not displaying any subtlety. But honestly, what did I expect? "New series of Tenchi Muyo is tasteful, witty, and lacking in clichés. Thought-provoking look into Jurian culture and mythology and flawless CG by the wizards at Studio Gonzo..." No, of course not. I get triple-takes of huge honking breasts, a poor excuse for the main character to be the main character, and the thoroughly predictable and unnecessary romantic plot.

Finished Ninja Gaiden. Man, what a letdown ending. One of the easiest boss battles in the game, and then an "enh" FMV. Oh well, can't have everything. It was pretty bad that the next game I played was Twin Snakes, because I wasn't up for sneaking at all. Though I was really upset with the GameCube controller, whose analog stick didn't feel at all designed for Metal Gear Solid. I sent Twin Snakes back to GameFly, in eager anticipation of Pandora Tomorrow. Good thing I still have an Xbox Live account.

Up next is a full re-encoding of all the music I legitimately own, at the ridiculous constant bitrate of 256kbps. Why? I was inspired by an article in MaximumPC that gave instructions on how to get a perfect MP3 every time. So, the wannabe audiophile that I am, I decided to give it a try. It's a lot of fun, except the freedb.org database isn't nearly as polished as Gracenote. I'm going to have to spend some time manually typing in song names. Yay for tedium.

I also got a chance to play Lineage II, thanks to FilePlanet. Technically, it's a very pretty game. The interface is fairly straightforward. But while there are four races to choose from, there's only 2 different faces and hair colors per race! Everybody's the same size, girth, but with (oooh!) one of FIVE different hair colors. Not to mention that every race's starting area has THE SAME monsters to kill - these stupid wolf things. I'm tired of cutting games slack because they're in beta. The sickest thing about this game is how you can look up a female elf's skirt while she's running and see her panties. Man, those Lineage programmers are seriously deprived people.

I think I spent my entire spring break playing Ninja Gaiden. Fantastic game, very challenging, gorgeous graphics. Shame that it'll have such stiff competition for Xbox Game of the Year awards, assuming Halo 2 also comes out this year. Something that crossed my mind while playing Ninja Gaiden is how the best Xbox games have repetitive levels. Or at least these two do. Ninja Gaiden does a better job of it, and I certainly enjoy going back to old areas more than I did in Halo. But why the lack of drastically new material late into the game? Oh well... that's the only flaw I can find, so I felt compelled to report it.

Finished a second disc of Kiddy Grade. That anime is actually less painful dubbed, which is odd because the dialogue is no less wooden and unconvincing. But hey, it's better than Dirty Pair flash, and it makes me appreciate all my other anime all the more.

Somebody tell me why I'm hanging on to my GameFly copy of Crystal Chronicles instead of sending it back for something I can play by myself. I can't summon the energy to play that game any more... I'll leave it to the more social kids. Hopefully Twin Snakes will come quickly.

A hearty cry to my friends out enjoying Spring Break this week. I hate working, but I love money. So I'm filling out my timesheets as usual and will be spending this week in an eternity of tedium. Hooray! If you're heading out to Miami, you might want to watch out.

Finished three episodes of Last Exile this weekend. I don't really know what I think yet. As usual, Studio Gonzo has this terrific premise, but they fill it with the most predictable action movie clichés. Will the stuffy general decide to head into a suicidal battle or retreat and go back home to his daughter? Will our heroes throw the race in order to tend to a man in a downed plane? Gee, what do you think? I'm annoyed, but mildly curious to see where they're going with all this CGI.

Doubtless you've played the Ninja Gaiden demo by now. It is a wonderful game, that Ninja May Cry. Oh, sorry. Onimusha Gaiden. Or... well, the list goes on. Let's not cry about the borrowed ideas in this game, and instead focus on the fact that they took all the good ones, instead of borrowing from, say, Kabuki Warriors. I've cleared my GameQ at GameFly and sent back a game in anticipation of it's arrival. What a better way to spend Spring Break?

Kiddy Grade, though. I feel bad for Penny Arcade (who advertize for it), watching that anime. The character design is great, the spaceships and sci-fi mumbo jumbo is fine, and the voice acting is good. But oh heavens, is it directed poorly. I had to fight to keep awake during the combat scenes. The conversations don't sound natural at all and the subtitles are so far from what the characters are saying that I felt I was watching Moldiver. Try to ignore the sexy box art when you pass through Best Buy or Suncoast. This anime would be so much better if they just fired the director and found some new subtitlers. In the meantime, I'll try to get around to Last Exile.

I've given up buying things in stores. NetFlix and GameFly are so much more convenient, and, when priced against my usual entertainment bill, much cheaper. I've already gone through Ico, Devil May Cry, and Crystal Chronicles thanks to GameFly. It's pretty clear that Crystal Chronicles sucks in single player. I'm so glad that, despite the hype, I didn't actually buy it. A wonderful four-player game, but you may as well delete the single-player option. Phooey. Might as well twiddle my thumbs until Ninja Gaiden arrives.

Things are looking good on the anime front. Witch Hunter Robin is, without a doubt, the ultimate goth anime. Like dressing in black? Candles? Magical powers? It's no wonder that this anime was picked up by Cartoon Network, and, sadly, why they cut the introduction. Robin is H-O-T HOT, gyrating in front of that TV while Amon gets geared up to hunt witches.

What a great month this is for gaming. Metroid Zero Mission is occupying my time, as I revisit Zebes in all of its glory. This bit in the end is giving me some trouble, but I'm sure I'll get past it soon. Funny how everybody is whining about the length of the game, as if it's a perishable. Play it again, Sam.

Turns out there was no way I could win that first Blitzball tournament in FFX. Either that or I suck at Blitzball. Regardless, I'm not touching the filthy underwater sport again. Would you believe my plowing through this game is a desperate attempt to get to play FFX-2, because I have no problem with fanservice? Of course not. What a silly thing to think.

Just a small warning for the future: like many people who have webpages, I fancy myself doing this for a living. I'll give everybody ample warning, of course, but I may decide to restyle this domain to service my slowly growing web design career. Maybe.

Somebody tell me what I'm doing with a PlayStation 2. Oh. That's right; I'm playing FFX. For the first time. Having exhausted my Xbox and Gamecube libraries, I'm moving backwards through time in my search for video game fulfillment. I picked up a refurbished PS2 and am having a great time going through the giant in-game cinematic that is FFX. The championship game of Blitzball is kicking my ass, though.

In order to get this system at the price I wanted, I had to rescind my Crystal Chronicles pre-order. Why would I do that, you ask? Simple; I have no friends. That should explain things adequately.

There's more to this and other stories, of course, but I just realized why I don't have a proper weblog. The idea of exposing my deepest thoughts to the Internet public is horrifying. There's a reason we keep things secret; there are things we don't want other people to find out. Me? I'm a big ball of secrets.

I am a coding machine. I can't believe I spent the entire weekend at school, rewriting our inventory system from scratch. What's more amazing is how finished it is... only some touchups today and I can take a breather. Maybe I'll go down to the doctor's office and get that lovely arm brace that my wrist seems to be screaming for.

Got the FLCL Addict soundtrack yesterday. Some good music right there. Oh! That's right; I watched the Read or Die OVA on Friday too. What a cool show, though the formulaic parts leap out and smack you around. "Take care of my little sister..."

What's this? An actual update schedule? Perish the thought! Actually, my life has settled down a bit, so I can afford to do this every weekend. Expect the same kind of nonsense as before, and you're set.

In operating system news, have you seen this video by Hunter Cressell (Windows Media required)? Some of it doesn't seem true, but it's a hysterical Mac ad spoof. Too bad there's nothing like this for Linux.

I just finished Crimson skies in less time than I finished Metroid Fusion, I think. A good game, but I was expecting a second half to it. Zuh. Anyway, catch me ("Janus Kirin") on Live, won't you?

Oh yeah... CHAPTER NINE BEGINS TODAY! Finally! Something (slightly) different!

Happy new year, everybody! I hope you spent the transition to 2004 as I did, frantically trying to find a broadcast of Times Square that wasn't from Univision. So the ball dropped and no terrorists bombed anything. All that terror for nothing. Phooey.

New things are fun. I'm on Xbox Live now, tearing up the streets in Project Gotham Racing 2, getting shot down in Crimson Skies, piloting stupid craft in Clone Wars, fitting blocks in Tetris Worlds, and... uh... dancing like a moron with DDR Ultramix. Look up "Janus Kirin" sometime today and introduce yourself with a hearty shout of "APPLETRIX!" If you see me around, I might clue you in on where The Villain is heading. I may not have a lot of time to do these comics, but I have fun income options. What do you think of my current artist? I'm looking to feed my rampant narcissism by getting more portraits done, and I figure I might shop around.

Oh, and if you want to clue me in on the Squidi.net scandal, (assuming you care) please do so.

Update: Monday, monday... don't come my way. La, la - okay that's quite enough of that. Much to everybody's surprise, Comic #71 is finished. It awaits merely some explanatory text to get it posted. I'd like to thank the (definitely not misspelled) Dason Kurkiewicz for giving me the kick in the pants necessary to finish that comic. When you get up Monday morning, look toward the east. IT'S GANDALF! Then turn on your computer and come here. I'll have something for you.

Aaah, Christmas vacation. Even in the advanced collegiate state that I'm in, I still appreciate a vacation every once and a while. Yes, that's right, I actually enjoy my classes, my work, and my colleagues. You may think me insane for believing so, but... did you check the URL before you came here?

What this means to you, dear reader who stumbled here for most likely no reason, is that I have time to produce comics again. Here, witness number 70. And to answer your question, I'll see it sometime next week with my pals. Until then I'll spend three hours and twenty minutes a day playing Knights of the Old Republic.

Soon we can move on to Chapter Nine. No one's more relieved than I. Oh, and are the forums down? Webcomic.net was, quite honestly, my last choice for message board hosting, but the price was right.

Did somebody order a comic? Anybody? There's twenty bucks inside, plus a credit card I can't identify. Shall I turn this comic into the lost and found box? Anyway.

So I took the stupid plunge and picked up Final Fantasy XI. If I hadn't known that these discs were the same ones handed out to beta testers, I might have been pissed at the six-hour patch time on my high speed connection. And if I hadn't known this had been in development concurrently for the PS2, I might complain about what must be the world's worst interface for any game, ever. And that they don't give you a full description of the missions you're undertaking - hope you remember what Cid said about eighteen pages of chat text ago!

Makes you wonder why every store in town is sold out of the strategy guide. Still, I'm having some fun as Squaresoft mixes the familiar Final Fantasy legacy with the absolute worst of the MMORPG. At least the first month's free.

Shall we just go on like normal, then? I'm not one to get all weepy, especially about things on the Internet. So this site's going to be updated again. Once a week, I think. Traffic isn't that high, so I can afford to slack off. (:-P) And post smilies, though I loathe the silly things. The story goes on, albiet at a snail's pace. Surely you have something better to do than read this comic, right? That's what should be filling your days.

Oh, and whatever you do, DO NOT purchase Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. It is an illegal substance. Portable, like heroin. White, like crack cocaine. Addictive, like... erm... Springer? Put down the game boy and walk away.

A press conference? You'd think I'm some sort of important guy, what with my suit and tie and expired parking permit. I'm launching a website today, something having to do with Cuban dissidents. I dunno; I was half-asleep while making the site. If you see a little blurb about Rule of Law and Cuba come up on MSNBC, that was me. I hope they don't take any pictures.

So my fifteen seconds of fame on the Internet come and go. An 8-bit guest comic is kinda the highlight of a sprite comic's career, right? Unless you're just living this modest destiny and these mall monkeys (shoot, forgot the URL) spray paint that goatse vulgarity on your forums. The thing that puzzles me is, why would anybody do that? It's not like those two are competing sprite comics. The Top Web Comics is an ugly business. Good thing I'm so low on the charts that I don't get that kind of attention.

Soul Calibur II is ruining my life. I'm a hardcore DOA3 player, so moving to SC2 is a radical change in pace. Okay, maybe it's not as bad as King of Fighters or something, but this multiple ranged weapons combat is tough. I can see why SC has lasted so long; the fighting is deep and accessible, and the weapons are très cool. I'm working through the Weapons Master mode now. It seems to be as short as the reviews say, but I'm having fun pretending I'm in some RPG where the only choices you make are where to go and how to defeat your enemies. Ya know, like Final Fantasy VII. (BURN!)

Such a delightful game. And then there's F-Zero GX, the fastest racer since Ballistics on the PC. Hard as balls? Check. Teeny, tiny vehicles that make it feel like you're racing Micro Machines? Check. Oh, and exquisite course designs and a beautiful, rock-solid 60fps? Also check. You Cube owners (myself included) probably don't have many games for your system... might as well pick this one up. I'm having some fun, even as I bang my head against the wall.

Classes have started, and I'm swamped. A full load, twenty hours a week of work, the gaming committe, and this comic. It's a wonder I find time for trivial things like lunch. I'm a maniac, that's for sure. 8-bit Theater's first guest comic is up, but it isn't mine. No big deal. Apparently it had already been posted on the Arts & Crafts forum. Besides, it's got this pseudo-sexual vibe that I don't like at all. I still know mine rocks. If it doesn't get picked... well, then I'll cry a little tear and post it here. Never fear.

Soul Calibur II comes out on Wednesday. And so does F-Zero GX. And Otogoi. And Homeworld 2 in four weeks. Pardon me if I'm having seizures of anticipation.

So I finally have an 8-bit Theater guest comic. You can see a preview (one panel) of it above. Keep an eye out for me when Brian starts posting them, okay?

Lots of fun. The laptop that I checked out from the school seems to be faulty. That is, it turns on, the fan whirs, and nothing comes on the screen. Either the hard drive's dying or the processor's overheating. Or it only works when I take it to school, 'cause it ain't working here at home. Phooey. At least I'll be able to get my Xbox Live groove on, once my paycheck clears. Midtown Madness 3, here I come!

Wow. Our educational system really is something else. This company called Howard Computers sent us a computer several months ago. The staff then didn't particularly like it, and wanted Howard to take it back. But we refused to pay shipping. And so did Howard. So I've been using the computer for webdev. Imagine my surprise when an inventory of a back closet reveals a laptop by Howard in the same predicament. It was more "give it to Jordan!" than surprise, but you get the idea. I score a smokin' laptop. Life is good.

So it looks like 8-Bit is taking guest comics. I'll have to try my hand at that. See if I can't drum up some traffic (which is how I found Dominic Deegan).

I'll have you know that today's comic almost didn't arrive. I said to myself, "Self, what would you be doing if you didn't have these comics to draw?" I replied, "Why, playing Knights of the Old Republic for five hours, that's all." But the acclaim of my readers is worth far more than gallavanting around the galaxy as a Jedi, striking down evil doers and collecting awesome loot.  *twitch*

This comic is dedicated to my mother, who managed to haggle a brand new Nissan Sentra from $17,500 to $15,201.06 including tax, tag, and title. You go, mom.

As many of you are aware, the fall semester is about to start. I'll try and keep this comic's pace up as long as I can, but it ain't easy. I appreciate your patience if I start to slip.

Sunday's Update: Hah! Back in my apartment after a torturous week-long vacation. And I'm dead tired after eight hours of driving. Your faithful webcomic will return Tuesday if not sooner.

I'm still alive! No, really! I've just been on (and am still on) vacation, which means, ironically, less free time than I usually have. Why all the hold up? Two words: new car. Also one word: iPod. For my alcohol-legal birthday, I was given the keys to a shining new 2004 Nissan Sentra. White, to match my new iPod. Yeah, it's heaven. Direct all jealousy-motivated death threats to my good buddy George W. Bush, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue...

Another big shout out to Faith for today's guest comic while I prepare a delightful message from Yugi for the latest letter. As a technical note, what's the name of the "evil" Yugi with the slanty eyes? Is he still "Yugi," or is it "Aku Yugi" or something? I'm just wonderin'.

The forums are still active, despite the lack of activity. I've got a query for you, and I'd be thrilled if you'd post your thoughts. Busy busy busy, sunday sunday sunday.

I love that quote. I never knew I was saving it until today. Anyhoo, it's August 10th, and thus my birthday! And I'm up late at night making this comic instead of sleeping or drinking or trying to kill myself by playing DDR again.

Chapter eight begins today. Aerimus and Savannah find themselves in a very strange place with a very strange name. More than that I cannot reveal right now. What I can tell you is that I'll be getting to some actual RPG jokes that no one else has done before. And what's more, they're funny! Yowza!

Update (Sunday): Yikes! I've gone on vacation and am limited in my computer and internet connection. Sunday's comic will be a little late (as in, an hour or two after midnight). In the meantime, Faith pulls up the slack with another guest comic, for which I am eternally grateful. Or grateful until Tuesday.

Chapter seven finally ends today. It's the longest chapter I've done so far, and (you might notice) kinda petered out around the end. Fourteen comics in one town is pretty exhausting. 's time to pick up the pace a smidge.

My offer still stands to anyone who wants some hosting space. I've got 10 megs on a real .com with no ads and it's got your name on it. The catch is, of course, that I'm holding out for some really quality material to host. Free hosting sites suck these days; why not submit something my way?

Anyhoo, guest comic #3 has been created and linked for your viewing pleasure. Jer passes his Save vs. Spell, but by what margin... If that comic looks rather dark to you, it's probably my fault. Lousy Internet Explorer! What you do for Jordan?

Yowza, what an incredible amount of pain I'm in. I feel like my brain is three sizes too big for my head. That's only one size larger than normal, but it still hurts. I'll try and relay what information I can before I go drug myself to sleep (over-the-counter drugs, folks).

Chapter seven is coming to a close. I've got one more comic in the City of Cali, which I promise will be funnier than this one (or will at least feature something besides anime jokes). Chapter Eight will be good for me (I can only do so much Kavian-Savannah baiting before I need to recharge my batteries) but bad for you, if the "most popular Villain character" poll I've been secretly keeping is accurate.

Also! As you can tell, the Latest Letter hasn't been updated. My brain is fried tonight. I couldn't make you laugh even if you were laughing your ass off and I was the one making you do it. So here's the deal: you have guest comics, you have fanart. Hell, you have stuff that doesn't even relate to The Villain. You send it in, and we all marvel at your genius.

Why? Because once I was just a struggling webartist with an idea. *checks his hit counter* ... and I still am. Okay, bad route. Here's the real reason: I love having original content on my website. I can only do these comics three times a week, and even then I'm barely maintaining a "life" on the side. But I know people come to websites for content, and if I can't produce as much as I want to (which is a lot), then you can help yourself to my server space and bandwidth. So let fly your ideas of fancy.

If you've got your own sprite comic, let's see some of it. If you pick up a pencil and can actually draw something with it, send that in too. And I used to host ffstories.com (now retired), so I'm down with fanfiction and, for that matter, original fiction. If it's good, I'll make it a regular feature. If it's really good, I'll give you a subdomain and 10 megs to do with as you please. Go on. Make my day.

As is my passion, I must advertize the Villain forums once again. You have nothing to lose but your boredom. You need to register first, but it's a painless process. Incurring Savannah's wrath... now that can be painful.

Forum regular and roller of the dice Jer has crafted a guest comic that raises the stakes considerably as the animosity towards poor Aerimus heats up. Will we see spritèd backgrounds in the next guest comic? Or hand-drawn art (Slacker Saint, wherefore art thou)? Who knows...

As usual, Knights of the Old Republic holds my attention. So much so, in fact, that I didn't notice Mario Golf's release just last week. I'm following the path of the Light in KOTOR, but I love the dialogue options that let you be evil. Guess I'm just a good guy at heart. Writing a comic titled "The Villain." Did I mention that I don't have a sarcastic bone in my body?

Lots of cool stuff today. For one... the forum is open! Hooray! Your fellow Villain readers are waiting in the forum, and so are Aerimus, Kavian, Savannah, and Lyssie. Hop in, chat up a storm, have a ball. Now the only thing I need to flesh out this site is an obnoxious 3 meg Flash introduction with no "Skip Intro." Can you say mwa ha ha?

Also, the Cast & Crew page has been updated. Lyssie now has her backstory filled in, along with a little tidbit I didn't get room to say in the comics. How cool is that? (Cool maybe, but it's rather late. Shame on me...)

Today's award for "The Most Insane Letter Ever" goes to a certain shadowed dragon from the Dominic Deegan forums. I'm beginning to understand a little bit of the "too much free time" saying. But if you do have anywhere near this amount of time, why not draw or write something and send it to me? I don't keep this webserver online just for my own narcissistic pleasure, you know.

Update: It's new! It's wild! Never before tested on animals; you'll be the first! It's the forums for The Villain. They've just opened for your discussion and enjoyment. Talk about this comic and other fun things at the forum. What are you waiting for? Go there now!
(Or go here to register for a forum account)

There must be a record for fastest turn-around time on a guest comic. If there is, I'm sure BMHadoken has set a new record; something like two hours after I post Sunday's update he sends me this guest comic. Before you laugh too much, you should know that he hit rather close to the mark. This is actually what my comics look like before Photoshop transforms them. The only thing BMHadoken forgot is the little letters above each person's head (as Lyssie and Savannah both have blond hair). Yes folks, there's a reason I do sprite comics and not original artwork. And as a side note, you may be witness to the Orb of Water's powers before this chapter is up.

Today's letter is shorter due to creative burnout on my end. It's a conversation I intercepted between Savannah and this "Jer" fellow. I should have something more witty for you on Friday; for now, enjoy the comic.

Big thanks to all the people who wrote in to me. Some sent letters to my personal account, others decided to contact Kavian or Savannah. Today's letter is in fact one of those messages. It is, by far, the most disturbing thing I've ever received in my mailbox. And now you have the pleasure of reading it!

My car was rescued from death for less than the price of two video games. Or a copy of SWG: Collector's Edition. Annoying, because I was enjoying the attention and pity that a sick car generated.

I know I haven't done any advertizing for it, but I'm always looking for folks to do fanart, fanfiction, or guest comics. Kavian, Aerimus, Savannah, and Lyssie are a fun-loving, dynamic bunch; they're dying to see your creativity in action. Chapter Seven will be ending soon... don't miss out on your opportunity to bridge the gap to Chapter Eight! When you're ready, make with the clicking below.

Click on that Latest Letter link up there. Go ahead. It's open to the public now. Oh, and it's from a real person... to two imaginary people.

Once upon a time I decided that I'd try to stay away from all things lame in life. This happened right about the point when I started reading SomethingAwful. Their negative view towards anyone with a real passion for anything holds a real appeal for the disaffected college student. Don't get me wrong; I love SomethingAwful. They have fantastic writers, and I am continually taken aback by the quality of the articles up there. Sometimes the topics aren't terribly sane ("Hobosploitation Films" is a recent entry), but the humor is very high grade.

Where was I? Oh yeah, lameness. Casting aside the notion that webcomics are lame (and having read many sprite comics, I understand why Brian Clevinger hates them: the majority of them [except this one] suck ass), I decided to make my own. When I launched this site, I was unhappy with the amount of feedback I was getting. People didn't want to write in to say I was doing a good job. Boo hoo. Then I asked myself: when was the last time I wrote in to my favorite website(s)? I remember when: a week before Panzer Dragoon Orta was released for the Xbox. I asked Gabriel from Penny Arcade whether or not it supported HDTV. He gave me a jaunty "Yep, it sure does" and I went on my merry way.

So I'm not going to beg for cookies from my readers. If you've got something to tell me (i.e. "Hot housewives + you = FUN! snujcxmx"), that e-mail address I list below will work fine. Or if you don't want to do that, then just click on my voting button and contribute to my miserable position on the ass-tastic Top 150 Webcomics list. Or do nothing. The private hit counter I maintain will suffice to feed my ego.

Moving on. I'm sans car yet again; the glorious 1984 Pontiac Parisienne is ready to give up the ghost. It's currently at a mechanic to see if he can raise the dead. Thus I'm in the market for a new set of wheels. I'm looking for a nice, reliable 4-door sedan that costs less than a uber tricked-out VoodooPC ($15,000). What say ye, the savvy Internet population? A plain-jane Toyota is fine with me, as I know nothing about cars. For the longest time I didn't know there was a difference between a Honda and a Hundai.

Oh, and Meghan from MIT, I'd pick the one on the left.

Man, that was a long trip. Would you really drive 1,000 miles just for one meeting? I had a nasty run-in with Mr. Caffeine at the end of my journey: it's much easier to drink two big bottles of Water Joe than it is to drink four cups of coffee, especially while driving. Needless to say, I was a nervous wreck Sunday night (when I got back) and Monday at work. This is the part where I say "I'll never drink again," but I doubt it would hold up.

I hope everybody enjoyed reading the fake letters I've written. The idea was that I'd do that for a little bit, then be able to have Kavian and Savannah respond to real letters. Kinda like Strongbad, but updated regularly (frequent visitors know I'm a lunatic for getting this site up by midnight EST). But since almost nobody uses the handy-dandy form below to write anything of length, I've been wracking my brain to come up with anime / videogame characters to satire. If you like these letters or these comics even a bit, then lemme know. Or heck, click that voting button. Both go a long way toward keeping me sane and producing these things. There was just over 500 visitors to this site last week, so I know you're out there.

Hi folks! Remember that crazy-long trip I had to take, and the thing I had to do while I was there? Well, I'm kinda about to leave for it right now. I'm really sorry I don't have time to say more or write more. As an apology, please enjoy all my previous Thank You letters, without having to submit anything. Again, I apologize to my regular readers / commentators who say nice things to get the extra content.

You have my most sincere apologies if these two comics seem a little rushed. I've got this nasty-long trip to prepare for, and it's cutting into my comic schedule. But fear not, faithful readers! Everything should still be good to go for Sunday, even if I have to abandon the reason I'm taking this long trip just to do it. Obligations pull me in both directions; what I wouldn't give just to veg out on my Xbox and forget everything.

I thought of making a rant against ranting, but that wouldn't really work out. I give you my word that I will never use my keyboard to ramble incoherently about something that I don't like or find to be idiotic. There are plenty of stark raving people to do that for me.

Very nearly fifty comics. Where does the time go? ... I'll tell you: it goes into making these things, about four hours a piece. Amusing that I'm going to be doing a flashback halfway to my centennial.

I write these additional letters so you people will read them, consarn it! Faith isn't the only one who seeks hilarity, right? Hello? You could get them without writing, but I don't expect everyone out there to hack the Gibson, as it were. So click away!

I came to the realization some time ago that my index page didn't really cut the mustard. Therefore, it has been redesigned to this... the peak of your civilization. Anyhoo, the same rules still apply. The comics are updated three times a week, and so is the thank you letter you get if you send me a message. I encourage you shy readers to give it a try; you can access all the previous letters just by sending me one message. I'm waiting...

It is a great unjustice that I have to drive 500 miles the day after Knights of the Old Republic comes out. I saw a commercial for that last night, and it looked incredible. With a fixed hardware platform, without lag, and with lightsabers available at launch day, KOTOR looks really hot. I'm not a Star Wars nut at all, but the Xbox needs as many high-quality games it can get.

Sunday starts the great three-parter (or so I expect) that is Lyssie's background story. I'm curious if anyone finds these characters the least bit compelling; nobody says "shineys" or "stabbity," but they're at least a little bit interesting, right? Right?

Once again, I must thank There for trying to ruin my life. I bought a freestyle hoverboard in that game, and now I can do some neat tricks. I feel like Marty McFly from Back to the Future. When this game comes out, it's going to be bigger than the single-player version of The Sims. Yeah, you heard it here first.

Update: Check the bottom of the Extras page for a minor tidbit.

My verdict is in. Pirates of the Caribbean is a fantastic summer blockbuster movie. Johnny Depp is hysterical as the drunken pirate Captain Jack Sparrow. Everyone else just fades into the background when he's on screen. I will say, however, that it must be a sign of the apocalypse if there is such a thing as a successful theme park ride to movie conversion. Oh, and the ending (the romantic part of it) defies all internal logic to comply with the nauseating conventions of Hollywood. Be forewarned, matey.

Are you excited? Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic comes out in a scant four days. Bioware doesn't have the track record that SOE does, not to mention the indictments for war crimes. Time for a real, awesome Xbox-only RPG. I'm ready.

If the Top Web Comics site wasn't spitting out SQL errors like a wood chipper, I'd encourage you to vote. In the mean time, Kavian and Savannah have another letter that they don't want to read. But if you send me one of yours, they'll read it anyway.

Word on the street is that Pirates of the Carribean: The Ride: The Movie: That Goes on Forever is actually pretty good, despite it's bloated running time. The League of Sean Connery and Some Other Guys comes out Friday, and also looks interesting (but not many reviewers have seen it yet). If I could stand it, I'd see those two and T3 back to back, but I fear my eyeballs would explode. And that would make it a little tricky to make Sunday's comic. You've been warned.

A nice person by the name of "Faith" entreats you to visit her website, located on Angelfire's perky Gameboy powered servers. As I understand it, they hook up a link cable to an Ethernet jack and pray to their demonic gods to serve up pages. Fitting, as Faith does a necromancy comic.

Yes this is a long post... bear with me, I've got important information to relate. Today's update was brought to you no thanks to the game There, the most friendly game I've ever played. What is There? It's like The Sims Online, minus all teh suck. Here's the deal: you pick a gender, a name, and then you can explore anywhere in the There world. There's no monsters, no killing. There's fashion. There's trivia contests. There's Dune Buggy Races. There's arial platforms and spooky mountains and lush jungles. I spent the last two hours tootling around on a Hoverboard I bought, and I was having a blast. Ahh, but here's the catch. Aside from the 10,000 There dollars you get for free, you have to pay with real money to get more There dollars. I imagine you could get money by winning contests, but as of yet I haven't seen anything of the sort. Try it out, and see if you like being There. Just leave your credit card in your wallet.

It occurs to me that some people might not understand what's being updated every Sunday, Tuesday, and Friday on this site. There are four items:

• The comic itself
• The "Too Obscure for You" section below the comic
• This news post, which includes an amusing quote for your enjoyment
• A letter-reading by Kavian and Savannah

I trust you're all perceptive enough to figure out the first three. You'll only see that forth item if you send me a message using the nice little system I have below. Type in your name, tell me something, and Kavian and Savannah will read a letter from the world of anime, videogames, or whatever else I spoof on this damn fool website. If you provide your e-mail address, I'll send you a reply. If you don't get one, then this blasted form isn't working. Wait a few hours and try again (or pray to your demonic gods).

Okay, so no T3 for me. It's nice when laziness will result in you not spending any money. Besides, I have hours of anime that I haven't watched. That will have to do until I can drag myself to the theaters.

I have to say that even putting that vote button on my page is embarassing. It's not like I'm writing something that can't get popular based on merit, but I'll take whatever help I can get. If you're coming here from a messageboard or a MUD, my hat's off to you. And the fellow who referred you here.

Chapter Seven is going to be a lot of fun. If you like family intrigue, meaningful romance and meaningful family revelations, then you're at the right spot. If you expect anyone to say "OMG WTF" in casual conversation you may want to take a step back.

Oh! I decided to add a quick and easy feedback form to the site, for those of you with a smile on your face but a frown in your e-mail client. ... Whew, that made a fantastic amount of sense. Let me try again: send me a yay or nay on the latest comic, the series/characters in general, or these increasingly ramble-filled news entries. You don't even have to give out any contact information! I promise to read every single one of them and respond if you give me your e-mail address. If I don't, then may I be forced to act in Legally Blond 3... as the dog.

There's a little treat for those of you who enjoy obscure anime references, but you can only get it if you send me some comments. I look forward to hearing from you!

Terminator 3 beckons to me from the local movie theater. I'm dying to see Arnold in action again, but I'm still traumatized from Collateral Damage, easily the worst movie I've seen since Dungeons and Dragons. And for some reason, a Live! account also beckons. I will be strong. I will leave my checkbook at home.

Chapter Seven has officially started today. Some of the great mysteries of the world will be revealed, like why the Sphinx lost its nose. Other, smaller mysteries like how Lyssie came to the Lake household, and what Kavian's plan was in comic #2 will also be revealed. But mostly the Sphinx. And as befits a new chapter, there is a new picture in the Archives. I've decided to start using pictures that may not appear in the comics themselves, but tell a little bit about the chapter's theme. In this case... mmm... that's not a sunburn.

You still here? Good. Let me explain that button to the left.

There is this thing called the Top 150 Webcomics site. Many of you may already know about it. It's where many web comics go to publicize their sites, gaining respect and notoriety just like ... hey! Wake up! Sorry about that; let me get to the point. I despise the Top 150 Webcomics. I believe that many of the web comics on the top 10 are coasting on past successes, with readers visiting more out of habit than a desire for an amusing strip. Don't even get me started on White Ninja Comics or Spelling the Vacuum, which have the humor content of German impressionistic applesauce. (Hey, I was doing this synonym search and couldn't find anything good)

Why, then, would I want to participate in this contest with one-handed pattycake players?

Well, because advertizing on the forums of other webcomics is embarassing.

So click on that link every time you visit for a new episode and vote for The Villain. If you're too lazy to send me a compliment, then tell the people at the Top 150 Webcomics that there is an author who updates on time, has characters following an original plot, and knows how to end every comic with a punchline.
And then tell them about me.