Damn republicans with their Machiavellian vote manipulation tactics.

Pauly Shore, the Shia LaBeouf of the late 80s, made a movie in 2004 where he faked his death in order to get attention, which ponders his legacy. In spite of all expectations a rational mind would have, it is not a terrible, terrible movie. Essentially an hour and a half of B and C list cameo appearances, it might as well have been an excellent episode of Family Guy without the Griffins. Which is damning it with faint praise, but it is a Pauly Shore movie, so it could’ve been a really horrible episode of Family Guy with Pauly Shore in it.

I did not sit down to this with masochistic tendencies. I watched "Pauly Shore is Dead" because it was on at one in the morning and I’ve got a cough that won’t let me sleep. So I watched a bunch of big name celebrities, many of whom I hate, half ass act like they miss Pauly Shore. Rubbing salt into the wound, there is a subplot that allows Pauly to dress like the unibomber, wave a very obviously plastic squirt gun around as if it were real, all while he snickered and spazzed his limbs in odd directions.

After the whole damn movie inevitably goes down the drain, Sam Kinison makes an appearance as Pauly’s guardian angel. The scene might have been a little deeper than what I got out of it, because I only know who Sam Kinison is because most of my friends are twenty years older than me. In fact, Britney Spears comments on how dated every joke in this movie is during her cameo, by calling someone to find out who Pauly Shore is and commenting, "Oh, he was on MTV before I was born." This moment with Kinison still kind of drives home the point of the film, in an all caps "THIS IS THE POINT OF THE FREAKING MOVIE" kind of way: dried up, shitty actors are not just walking non-sequitors that will be forgotten very soon, they are also train wrecks that haven’t happened yet, but nobody is stopping. All throughout the movie, I was picking out random faces and saying to myself, "Hey, there’s that guy I vaguely know who just went to jail," or "Hey, there’s that random chick from some thing I kinda remember who is dead now," or "Ooh, hey, some jerk on the E channel said that guy is dying from hepatitis b."

So Pauly Shore is not dead. But he will be, probably soon, and he’ll probably die a sad millionaire who nobody understood, exactly as he put it in his movie. He’ll either get two minutes of mourning between stories on bioluminescent cats and someone getting tazered, like James Brown and Jimmy Carter, or he will get a month or two of MSM weeping, like Anna Nicole Smith and Randy Newman. The twist to the whole movie, is that apparently he’s aware of this, and is pretty much resigned to his station. That idea, which exists inside and outside of this really bad movie, makes "Pauly Shore is Dead" not terrible to sit through. In fact, it offers a gut twisting message about this miserable existence. Or maybe I’m just depressed from coughing up green phlegm while watching a filking Pauly Shore movie.

What the Hell is this thing?

Mass Effect has been out for three weeks. In that time, it has sold 1,000,000 copies. With regular and special edition SKUs, that translates to over $60,000,000 in sales. Halo 3 recently passed the five million copies sold mark. That is well over $300,000,000 in sales, with the more expensive SKUs, including one that retailed for $129.99, profits may be as much as $400,000,000 – $420,000,000. And it ain’t even Christmas yet.

Comparing the game industry and the movie industry this year, the game industry made more profit. With Hollywood lobbing crappy propaganda films and botching the major franchise releases, and also Fred Claus, it has been a rough year for movies, and this is not the first time this has happened. But you look at the amount of competition to break into Hollywood versus what it takes to make it in the gaming world, and it is disgusting, but they both mostly cater to the same audience – 12 year old boys. Maybe the video game industry is on a bit of a bubble, as the MMO craze may end up being a fad, and there are no doubt missteps to be made with major sequels to established titles. But still! Put down $15,000,000 for development – and get literally twenty times that on your investment… Halo is it’s own animal, and that doesn’t happen every time. But it’s like every single successful game is the budget equivalent of The Blair Witch Project. No doubt there are and will be flops, but my mind is just blown by these big, beautiful numbers.

Tis rare that spam forces its way past the might gmail blockade, but when it does, it is usually a doozy. Either the Chinese want my bank account number, or I won the Brazilian super lotto, or that old favorite:

I had to read this ten times to make up my mind whether this was a real junk e-mail, or if it was something I sent myself when I got bored. There’s broken english, a play on infomercial talk, and it’s about penises. At this point I must wonder, am I imitating them, or am I them? Is my life leading up to a twist? While thinking that I am Jack, am I actually Jack’s prostate?

Only the people at MegaDik know for sure.

Paris Hilton has destroyed the world. It is at times like these, I wonder if Gabe has pissed off Tyco. Per his prophecy:

"I will kill myself. And when my tainted spirit finds its destination, I will topple the master of that dark place. From my black throne, I will lash together a machine of bone and blood, and fueled by my hatred for you this fear engine will bore a hole between this world and that one.

When it begins, you will hear the sound of children screaming—as though from a great distance. A smoking orb of nothing will grow above your bed, and from it will emerge a thousand starving crows. As I slip through the widening maw in my new form, you will catch only a glimpse of my radiance before you are incinerated. Then, as tears of bubbling pitch stream down my face, my dark work will begin.

I will open one of my six mouths, and I will sing the song that ends the Earth."

And now:

I can hear children. Screaming.

Because I’m waging my future on the video game industry, it’s something I like to keep an eye on from all sides. A big industry story that’s been getting a lot of attention on the net for the past two weeks has been the firing of Jeff Gerstmann, an editor at GameSpot who has worked there for over ten years. The big conspiracy, very simply, goes something like this:

1. Jeff gave a negative review to a title called Kane and Lynch.
2. The game’s publisher pulled their advertising from the site.
3. Jeff was fired for hurting the company by losing those advertising dollars.

There’s only a little circumstantial evidence that point to this being true. Chief amongst them, one of the higher ups at GameSpot is a game advertising guru, who supposedly was pushing the writers for softer critiques so that the company could maintain friendly relations with game publishers. I don’t believe what is commonly believed is true.

1. Why go after such a big fish? Jeff worked for GameSpot for over a decade. He had a very strong personality, and even developed something of a fan following. When a critic site has to respond to outside pressure, they usually maintain as much of their journalistic integrity as they can by gutting a freelancer. Nobody cares about them – they’re just random names on a page. Gerstmann was a site staple since the Nintendo 64 days.

2. If the review hurt the publisher so bad, why aren’t they pulling it? Apparently, the video review of Kane and Lynch was taken down, and the text review has been edited – but it’s still up, and the 6.0 score still stands. So, what’s up with all that? The video review was taken down due to bad production values, but the site is apparently sticking by Jeff’s final piece.

3. Gerstmann is a polarizing figure, and a bit of a d-bag in his writing. I’m guessing this is why he was really fired. By all means, good luck to him in the future, but he did have somewhat of a reputation of going harder on games than most other critics. Somewhat of a saying on the Penny Arcade forums is that, whenever a game gets reviewed by IGN before GameSpot, all you have to do to predict the GameSpot score is subtract 1.5 from the IGN score. That sort of negative attitude at the site is going to be Jeff’s legacy there, as he helped establish that.

I could be wrong, of course. Counter to my beliefs, some of Jeff’s fellow employees are anonymously telling people the real scary truth of the situation – that is, if you believe they’re actually Jeff’s fellow employees. But if I was suddenly fearing for my job and feeling like I was under the thumb of my greedy corporate boss’ boss, the last thing I’d do is start flapping my lips and attracting digg.com’s attention.

The internet can sensationalize mundane daily activities. I wouldn’t be surprised if in this situation a guy getting canned for being an ass escalated into questioning an established finger of the new media’s journalistic integrity. Whether it is true or not, the trust people had in GameSpot has been damaged, but in a few months, it’ll all blow over and nobody will remember it any more. What the industry is actually suffering from right now, is a slow news cycle.

A few months ago, I mentioned that with Metal Gear Solid 4’s ballooning budget, it was going to need to sell two copies to every PS3 owner in America in order to break even. With increased sales of the console, Konami is happy to report that they only need to sell one copy to 50% of American PS3 owners… on day one. That would roughly be equivalent to 1/3 of Halo 3’s first day sales. In other words, they’re still going to need about 80% of PS3 owners to buy their game, and this will not happen. It’s like they’re on the diving board of an empty pool, and they’re diving anyway.

Metal Gear Solid was a fantastic game for the original Playstation, and firmly cemented its main character, Solid Snake, into the pantheon of video game action heroes. He was a bad ass special forces type, who achieved his goals using stealth and rugged experience, had some kickass face stubble, smoked cigarettes and didn’t care what people thought about it, and had a gravelly voice that could melt panties. Over the course of the game, Snake averted a thermonuclear war, the creation of a race of genetic super soldiers, and killed his evil, faggy, British brother.

Fans were psyched for Metal Gear Solid 2 – which turned out to be a game about an effiminate aryan boy whining over the phone about his emotional problems with his girlfriend. The game also established Solid Snake as a bisexual chronic masturbator, introduced some bad guys and conspiracy theories that blew the franchise’s believability out of the water, and included a mini-game wherein you made hostages piss themselves by waving a microphone in their face. Thus shattering Metal Gear Solid’s legacy.

The third Solid game was a prequel about Snake’s father, who was killed off when the franchise was still on the original NES. It was as awesome as the first game, but it kept the second game’s legacy of whacky bosses and stupid conspiracy theories. The damage had been done, and Metal Gear Solid 3’s sales were hurt by it.

This is one of the main bosses from Metal Gear Solid 3, named "The End." His background? He is a Civil War soldier who invented the concept of sniping, and his body chemistry allows him to absorb moss via osmosis in order to survive while waiting for a proper shot at his target for days and weeks on end. The game takes places in the 60s, so he’s about 120 years old in that picture. Yes, really. Snake’s dad shoots him, causing him to jump twenty feet in the air and explode. This is how all of the bosses in Metal Gear Solid 3 met their end.

It looks like Metal Gear Solid IV will continue to travel down the path of the idiotic. Reportedly, camera angles and some control issues western gamers have had in the past will be rectified, and that’s good. What’s bad? Well, let’s just say there are better ways to spend a quarter of a billion dollars than using it to make a video game about a geriatric, bisexual clone in the middle of a X-Files season 6 style elaborate conspiracy theory.

So it’s come to this. Our dashing hero from Metal Gear Solid will be sporting a Mario mustache, grey hair, wrinkles, and be caught in the middle of a war between America, China and a buttload of Muslims, and all of this is a set up so the Japanese can preach to all of us about how to live in balance with nature, and how war isn’t good. Oh, and those countries will be armed with unbelievable giant robots who attack people by kicking them. Let’s just throw some starlight people in there, Roseanne Barr winning the lottery and going to Hershey Park, and at the end, reveal it was all a dream and Patrick Duffy was just showering all along.

Metal Gear Solid doesn’t have a huge amount of macho universal appeal, which is exactly what it needs to make Konami’s money back. The creators killed what made the original game popular so that Hideo Kojima could wax poetic about global warming and the dangers of the media in the internet age. It’s like Redacted needing to make 300’s box office. It’s political propaganda with guns, and despite there being a lot of love left for the franchise, not many people want to deal with some pussy’s opinions while they’re trying to choke out a terrorist. Personally, I will be picking up a copy of the game, but this franchise really is about as potent as George Clooney, and I’m predicting it isn’t going to make the numbers its developers want.

The inevitable failure of Metal Gear Solid IV, which will be the third consecutive strike in the franchise, begs the question: What will happen to this franchise when Hideo Kojima is fired?

Tomb Raider: Anniversary is a stand alone game or an expansion pack for Tomb Raider: Legend available for all platforms. It was released on GameFly months ago, along side some promotional Lara Croft cartoons showcasing how the franchise would be reimagined under different creative minds, and has finally made its way to consoles.

Anniversary is an update of the original Tomb Raider game, which came out ten years ago to much critical praise and financial success. It’s especially interesting because after the creator of the franchise, Toby Gard, left the studio working on Lara Croft’s adventures to pursue his own ventures, the Tomb Raider games went south. They became more and more derivative of the original, and unimpressive when held against other games that came after, like Metal Gear Solid. After the final flop of Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness (no shit, that was the title), Toby Gard was handed back the franchise. His first hit out of the gate, Tomb Raider: Legend, was the most successful and highly praised Tomb Raider game since his original. I was really curious what he was going to do in remaking his original game.

Unfortunately, Anniversary was a horrible, horrible mistake. It is essentially a 1997 game with a 2006 engine. It’s really beautiful, and the updated environments will put a big geek smile on any veteran Croft fan’s face. But the original puzzles weren’t designed very well by today’s standards, and no effort has been made to improve them. It’s like putting new graphics on Battle Toads and expecting people to flip out over it again. To make things worse, there are a lot of clipping errors and physics detection problems in the engine, so jumping right through a wall and grabbing its ledge from inside of it, as weird as that sounds, isn’t uncommon.

From her breast enhancement in Tomb Raider II, breast reduction in Tomb Raider III, and breast reenhancement and lift in the following games, Lara’s character has been pretty flexible in her appearance and personality. Whereas she came off as a cold hearted bitch in Tomb Raider: Legend, the depth of her character in Anniversary is that she’s a woman who can beat up men. This is definitely the simple, original Lara Croft, with a few minor enhancements, and no dramatic complications save a few mommy/daddy issues.

She has Angelina Jolie’s lips and Madonna’s accent. Her body has been very carefully modelled, and while she still has her trademark curves, they’re actually really believable this time around. For example, her boobs are large, but look as if they’re fitting naturally into an athlete’s training bra, instead of just hanging out there as two perfect, weightless orbs that are immune to friction. Her hair also moves very nicely in its braid, and her muscles feel like they have weight and tensil strength during the various animations. If she wasn’t hopping around like Mario, this would be a pretty amazing and realistic climbing around on crap simulator.

In addition to the graphical upgrade, she also probably looks better than she did in Legend because this is a prequel, so she’s younger and perkier at this point in her life. Lara Croft has been aging in real time throughout the sequels since her debut, and is canonically in her mid-thirties right now. This is really admirable, because a lot of other video game hotties stay in the early twenties in American titles and in their mid-teens for Japanese games forever, unless they get killed off. Better writing would also help, but this gives a lot more weight to the character to know that she’s mortal like the rest of us.

Here’s hoping the next original Tomb Raider game will live up to Legend. This one didn’t, but it’s a very forgivable title. It’s not so much a stand alone game, as it is a cheap, quick expansion that will make fans of the first Tomb Raider very happy.