I'm a little pissed.

Okay, I'm always a little pissed, but now a little bit more. I like Guitar Hero. A lot. I've played it consistently since it first arrived on the scene back in 2005. So I was, of course, gleeful when the third iteration finally came out.

I'm pretty good, so I got through the first two song sections on expert pretty easily. Barracuda was a bit tough because I ain't the best at those long single-note streaks. But that's okay. Then Tom Morello walks on-stage. Wow, sweet, Tom Morello. I loved Rage, I like Audioslave, and I think he's done a lot for guitarists with his innovative style. Plus I want his "Arm the Homeless" guitar.

Then, as those two chicks walk out on stage, I hear something. It's barely audible, but I immediately knew I was hearing the "Bow chicka bow bow" bullshit tagline from Axe deodorants.

I immediately wanted 5 bucks back from my purchase. Gibson can be in my guitar game, okay? Krank amps, Zildjan cymbals, Audioline Mics, those can all be in my guitar game. Axe has no place in my guitar game, and I want 5 bucks back for that blatant and shameless product placement. I think the chicks in the Mitch venue have the tagline on their shirts, not to mention a couple of guitars available for purchase. Brought to us by Axe. Whoop-tee-shit.

Axe deodorant doesn't belong in Guitar Hero III. It's as far away from rock as a lace doily holding a toy poodle with curls in its fur. Famous rock stars don't need Axe. They could smell like badger shit and chicks would still bang them. Axe paid Activision to put their stuff in the game, but I still paid full price for the guitar and disc. I want the developers to see every penny they deserve for the game; they earned it. But Axe detracts from my experience. In fact, I bet the developers all moaned and shook their heads when they got that call from Activision saying "put Axe commericals in it."

So I want five bucks back. That's it. Maybe I'll buy a bottle of Axe. No, just kidding, I won't. Activision, call me. I'm on your speed dial. Under F.

If you're anything like me, and you probably are in that sense that you own a computer and read things that your monitor displays, you've either heard of or chomped down on one of the delicious morsels recently dropped into the internets in the form of demos. A good number of demos have appeared recently, no doubt in an attempt to sway that pile of cash you had planned to use to buy your mother that nice set of earrings she wanted but have instead decided to frivolously spend on yourself in the form of the glut of high-quality games coming this year.

Seriously. This year it's ridiculous. I can hardly keep track of all the good stuff.

But I'd like to run down a recent list of (mostly) PC game demos I downloaded and give you my horribly biased opinions on. I have no agenda aside from that whole "I hate multiplayer" thing. I'm also going to forego the drool part of graphics, because everything looks pretty damn good nowadays. Gameplay and story rule the roost for me.

Quake Wars:I guess this game's already out. Whatever. The demo level I played did not impress me at all. It involved driving a large vehicle made apparently out of kindling and gas through a thin stretch of road. In the ten minutes of this section, the vehicle was blown up about 9 times by the opposing team, while I ran around killing enemies by the truckful. This did no good as the vehicle just seemed to go up in flames at random times. Also it reminded me of Battlefront without the Star Wars edge, which kills it.

Hellgate: London: This one was decent, and kept me playing through to the end. It certainly reminded me of Diablo II which I'm sure it will to a lot of people, but the secret behind Diablo was the story and lore around it. The Hellgate demo yanked the story out completely and simply had me running through sewers fulfilling quests given to me by people I actively try to avoid in regular life. I hope, given some good backstory and an actual reason why I'm doing what I'm doing, the game could turn out okay.

Unreal Tournament 3: I played one round and deleted the demo. The game was better when it was called UT2004, and the vehicle levels just don't work. Can someone do a proper version of Battlefield for once? Even DICE, who made the original?

Crysis: Just got this one and ran through it. Surprisingly, it ran on my machine pretty decently without too many hiccups. Unsurprisingly, it's another bland shooter with some implants built into it. The player can choose to improve armor, speed, strength, etc. whenever he wants. That's a cool idea. But in the end you're still just running through a forest shooting North Koreans. Good in theory. Poor implementation. And the driving sucks.

Call of Duty 4: This one stood out for me. I'm not entirely sure why. I usually hate on basic shooters, but seriously, the game has so much going on all the time that it's hard to focus. In the demo the entire nation of Whateverstan has come out to shoot you, and you feel it all around with people yelling and gunblasts and mortars and everyone's crazy. There's just something charming about this title, and Infinity Ward has refined the scripted shooter really well here.

Mario Galaxy: Not a PC game obviously, but I happened upon a GameStop today to play a few minutes, and I ended up playing for almost half an hour. Immediately I got that wonderful old Mario 64 feeling, but with a lot more tricks and weirdness. The gravity is really goofy on the little planetoids, and I felt right at home figuring out the little puzzles stuck into the various star-fetching levels. If you haven't tried it, waggle the Wii-mote to fire Mario out of the stars.

That should cover it for now. Tune in next time when I actually figure out how to rip on Spore. Probably something about too many choices in character creation.

I always wanted to see a viable, visual, indisputable display on how to NOT make an MMORPG. Luckily, RF Online just became free, and now I can finally see how this is done.

I thought RF Online might be something to try out, something to soothe my aching brain after that Portal robot bitch got me and Hellgate was still 2 weeks away. 2 weeks, tops, my brain said.

I couldn't get past 20 minutes.

1. Character Creation: Good Lord, even WoW has more options than this. 5 different combinations for the head, legs, arms, blah blah blah. It's no wonder everyone looks the same. At least give me the tentacles option or scales or something. It's no wonder the guys who made the City of Heroes character creation system laugh their nuts off every stinking night over this trash. The CoH creation system is a game upon itself. The RF system is a failure to God and his children.

2. Tutorial: Christ, I haven't seen such painful Engrish since the early days of Ragnarok. Apparently the folks developing RF eschewed the localization stage completely and simply let whatever hideous nonsensical language they assumed was English into the game. After the tutorial, I had no idea what was going on, who I was in the game, or why I was even doing what I was doing. At least in WoW you had SOME semblance that you were on side A or side B and that side B was bad or something. RF has the back story of a Michael Bay movie without the opening credit crawl or the exposition or the car chases. Just a hollow shell of nothingness.

3. Graphics: Decent, I guess. All I saw was this elaborate fly-through of the tutorial area, the central city, and a small portion outside the town, but the environmental guys have shown their chops. My robot man looked like all the other robot men I ran across, my gun looked the same, I shot the same guys, and everything looked blurry for some reason. Maybe I wasn't running it at the right resolution.

4. Gameplay: Character control in this game fails at literally epic levels. The system was all figured out with Quake or Duke Nukem 3D or Marathon over 15 years ago. WASD = movement, right-click = camera. RF assigns the W key to walking. WALKING. Who in the name of Kratos walks in an MMORPG?! But no, you're supposed to swivel the broke-ass camera in the direction you might like to go, and then click where you want to go. In Diablo, perfect, I want to click there to walk over there. Oh, wait, Diablo isn't a shitty 3D MMORPG. This is the kind of thing that should be taught in the most basic of game design classes, like the 180 rule in film class or the 1+1=2 in math class.

Oh, and can I invert the Y-axis on the camera control like anyone who's played a PC game since TIE Fighter? Apparently not. Another Fail.

You know, I kind of like pressing space to shoot things in the game, but you press it once and everything else is automatic. It's kind of like WoW but the Space key is bigger than the 1 key so it's more demanding and there's no need to worry about the 1-9 keys, which are inextricably tied to the FUNCTION KEYS. At this point I use the function keys to look at and maybe accidentally load a document. You guys can use the numeric keys, we are not ashamed.

5. Sound: I dunno, I wasn't paying attention. It sucks.

Overall, RF Online is stealing your bandwidth if you download it. I really, really hate to say it, but WoW has really gotten the MMORPG system down to a tee, and anyone who deviates from it better have a DAMN good reason for doing so, like blowing the players where they sit, or making money spit out of their DVD drives. RF fails, fails hard, and this should be obvious because now they're offering it for free.

I have two hopes for the MMO religion: Conan and Warhammer. I pray fervently that one of these two actually takes hold. Please MMO God, let it happen. Let me feel joy riding an ultra-dimensional shark into battle. It's my only hope.

Internet Drama!

Okay, this needs to be re-iterated because I actually do care about this community and drop in several times a day to check out the latest news and whatnots going around here.

So I tossed a backhanded comment into that Hellgate thread talking about Ron and the D selling out. You probably saw it because everyone's salivating over a beta spot in the Hellgate game. 666 comments to win, that's a lot for a still-blossoming site like this. I think maybe 2 threads have gone over a thousand.

Here's the point I'm going to make in a roundabout fashion: within MINUTES of me dropping that comment, I get an e-mail from Ron calling me on my shit. Now let me ask you, how many mods call you on your shit on other boards? I think the simple fact of him popping me in the balls over the internet is enough to know that the dude actually cares about the site, cares about the folks who visit it, and cares about what is said upon the website.

My comment was in jest, but because there is no /sarcasm button on my keyboard, it was taken literally. I spoke to Ron and explained it, and I trust we maintain at best a relationship where he gets three free hits. Regardless, the point of this nonsense is to bow to Ron, and to point out to the rest of the readership of the site is that these guys are serious about their work, they really care about the D, and they have no intention of selling out no matter what the price.

The fact that they won't sell out impresses me more than anything, because I would sell out for forty bucks and a corndog. So hats off to the Dtoid crew, and let's drop this nonsense. Please? I simply despise internet drama.

Horseshit.

Now I will elaborate.

Deathmatch sprang to life in 1993 with the advent of Doom. 4 dudes, each computer plugged into the other with the IPX protocol, shooting each other with BFGs. Fast Forward 15 years, and we have... 16 dudes, each computer plugged into the other with the Internets, shooting each other with Rocket Launchers.

The only thing that has changed is the guns, a flag, and the amount of HDR lighting. I am of the vast, silent majority that has nothing to do with multiplayer, cares not about multiplayer, and wishes that games that tout multiplayer as their selling point would please die in a horrendous fire.

The fact is most gamers simply don't care about multiplayer capabilities of games. Sure, you have this and that many people buying Halo or Unreal and going online. These people are a minority, but they are VERY VOCAL. The power of the internet allows them to spout their aggressions. Folks like me, the majority who are happy to enjoy our single-player lives without the interruption of tourettes-stricken teenagers who have somehow coerced their parents into ignoring them for ridiculous amounts of time while they memorize Zanzibar.

The vocal minority is hurting the creative portion of the industry. For all those man-hours pumped into making sure the net protocols work, everything is synced, and all this cross-network malarky is flawless, they could be crafting a finer, more pronounced single-player experience that would uplift us, challenge us, and, oh I dunno, EVOLVE us.

Bioshock is certainly the champion of my cause. The single player game is stellar, compelling, insightful, and well-rounded. Trying to squish a multi-player aspect into the title would have been tedious and obnoxious and may have cost development time several months and a few coats of polish. It may have caused the mouth-breathing Halo addicts to look up from their drool-covered controllers to try the plasmid that shoots bees or the one that shoots flaming death, but that would confuse them. Sniper Rifle Bro, that's how you go.

I like Halo. It's fine. But Halo's popularity was born from its multiplayer. You yank that aspect out of the game and you would never hear a louder "meh" rise up from the Earth.

Also, Unreal Tournament 3 sucks and is boring as hell. It's a worthless piece of software that should quietly rot in a crypt where I can't smell it. I'd rather play Psychonauts a fourth time. in fact, I'm going to do that right now.

I'm old, folks. Not old in a get off my lawn old, but seriously stay off my lawn anyway.

But I am old enough to remember when King's Quest 1 hit the scene, when Wolfenstein was being traded on floppies at Ham shows (my Dad's a Ham Radio operator and I tagged along with him), and when CD-ROM games were a cute little ploy to sell tiny video files to idiots such as myself.

But there are a good number of games which stand the test of time. Like certain movies, games can remain important long after they become obsolete. Citizen Kane, Casablanca, Gone With the Wind, none of these movies are really sought after by the younger crowd. But they are important pieces of cinema and teach us many things.

I present to you the current list of Games You Should Try No Matter How Old You Are.

Day of the Tentacle: This classic masterpiece by Lucasarts and Tim Schafer is a sequel to Maniac Mansion, and is better and funnier in every possible way. Multi-directional time travel, selling a game idea before it's even invented to buy a 2 million dollar diamond, and the ol' tricking George Washington into thinking it's a Cherry Tree in order to save a friend 400 years in the future. Sweet.

Sam & Max: The recent episodes are an absolute blast, but one can never forget Sam & Max Hit the Road, in which our loveable friends save a Sasquatch from a midget in a toupee. Brilliant writing and animation.

King's Quest 6: I consider this to be the best in the series because of its branching plots, multiple endings, and sheer variety in settings. That goddamn Stick in the Mud needed to be taught a lesson, and any game that lets you take a Dangling Participle with you in order to solve a word puzzle needs to be mentioned. Also you get to die and go to Hades and make him FUCKING CRY. That's a helluva thing.

Leisure Suit Larry 6: This one I include because I was a teenager when I played it and basically sported a massive boner throughout. Sorry. But the graphic style and genius comedy made it perfect for its time. Neil Ross (the narrator) was pitch-perfect throughout the entire game, and I love everything he adopts his voice too. LSL7 was a treat too, don't forget it. Milk the beavers if you remember to do so.

Space Quest 5: The crux of the Space Quest Series. While many say that SQIV had the better story revolving a bunch of time traveling nonsense, SQV hit the nose with giving our hero Roger Wilco a crappy Dust Buster spaceship to clean up the universe, which led to once again saving the galaxy from a pile of gooey filth and really having a grand old time. I really wish Sierra had given this game the voice treatment, because the cast of characters was truly great, from Flo the navigator to WD-40 the evil robot assassin-turned science officer. And Ambassador Wankmeister was stupid hot. You don't even know.

Full Throttle: Yeah, you probably had your fill of Lucasarts adventure games by now, but you haven't. This is Tim Schafer's Magnum Opus in the 2D realm, and incredibly witty foray into the classic adventure format.
Ben, the leader of the Polecat biker gang, has been knocked out, the creator of his bike company offed, and he's been screwed six ways from Sunday. While shorter than other Lucasarts games, this one really gets under your skin with a cast you love, especially Ben and Maureen. It's a real shame we don't get characterization like this in games anymore.

Star Control II: I save this one for last, because it holds an important point in my life. When me and my friend played this game on his 3DO, it was inspiring. The music was just absolutely incredible for its time and nailed the setting perfectly. Every creature, every battle, every conversation with the Orz or the Ur-Quan or the Umgah was spot-on genius. The space battles were unique, the universe was excellent, and even the mundane task of collecting materials was challenging. But you, my friends, are in luck, because SCII has been released in free source. Just hit up This sweet link and try Star Control.. er, I mean, The Ur-Quan Masters. I might grab a strategy guide too, but trust me, if you haven't played through it before, you'll love every minute of it.

Well, there's my list. I'm sure my alcohol-raddled brain will think up others in the future, but this is your current assignment. Once you finish that I'll give you some more. I also recommend looking up ScummVM and DOSbox if you plan on playing these classics. Like a DVD player, jamming a VHS tape into it will only produce laughs and fire.