Light-hearted spoof aimed at Rockstar's hottest release of the year.

Although I've played previous GTA installments in the past, this will probably be the first one I plan to play through completion. Blame it on my addiction to achievements. Anyways, I can't think of any gamer on the planet who isn't eager to get their hands on GTA4, set to release next week on April 29th.

If you're not even the least bit excited, when's the last time you checked your pulse? Anyways, in lieu of this highly anticipated release, the folks at Crackle have published a short parody sketch which takes a few innocent pot shots at GTA4. Get the inside look at what goes on at a mo-cap company trying to move up in the corporate world and… well, you'll have to watch the clip to find out more.

GTA4 is in all our hearts…

We tried to embed the video but due to technical difficulties (sorry!), you'll have to settle for the good 'ol fashioned link which can be accessed here. Enjoy and have a great weekend folks!

Freedom is a lot more addicting than I thought.

You have to understand that it isn't my fault that I have largely shunned "open" games. I was after all raised on console and arcade games that made me this way. They gave me each piece in the puzzle and even the directions to assemble it. I didn't need to worry about the fact that what the game was asking me to do was a blatant waste of time. Talk to the town baker, who will give you the golden pancake batter that you will then grill up to a nice golden brown to appease the ogre that is blocking the entrance to the cave that holds some pointless object that you need to impress the king so he will give you a key that you can then use to gain entrance to the vaults where an all powerful sword resides that you can use to free the princess from the clutches of evil. Nevermind the fact that the king is the one who wants you to free his daughter. He still makes you do all that crap. And we did it. And I've doing it ever since, for more than 20 years. And I probably will do it until the day I die. Because for some sick reason, I keep coming back.

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I don't really care about all these hoops you seem intent on making me jump through.

Yay, the R-Type Command demo is up on the Sony store!  This makes me happy, because I've been looking forward to playing it for a while now.  So off I go to power up the PS3 and get downloading.

First off, though, it's time for a required update before I can access the Sony store.  Rolling my eyes at yet another one of these endless time-wasters, I start it up and do something else for ten minutes.  Once that's out of the way it's theoretically time for some R-Type Command.  A quick download and it's on the PS3's hard drive, and a bit of transferring over to the PSP and I'm almost good to go.

The last game I got for the PSP was Patapon, back in early March the week after it came out.  Apparently in the intervening three weeks a new update hit the PSP and now I need to take care of that.  So I set up my PSP with my home network (should have done it earlier, that one's my fault for being lazy) and get to downloading firmware upgrade 3.93.  Once that's done I plug my PSP into my PC's USB cable for a shot of power to make the update run smooth and am promptly told that's just not good enough.  The battery is "low" at 2/3 power and the juice from the USB AC hookup just isn't cutting it.  I drag my PSP into the other room where I've got the AC adaptor plugged into the wall and, finally, decide I've had enough of this.  The PSP goes back into its case and I go do something else.

This is how this story should have gone-  The R-Type Command demo was up on the Sony store and I downloaded it.  One quick transfer to the PSP later and I was playing the game.   That didn't happen, and now I just don't feel like dealing with this silly crap. 

Seriously, Sony, all I wanted to do was play a game. 

A new year, a new spiky-haired lawyer.

Having completed Capcom's newest legal adventure, I offer a few impressions for you to nibble on with your evening brandy.

It has been seven years since the events in Trials and Tribulations transpired.  Phoenix Wright has been disgraced and disbarred (for reasons that you know I can't reveal here), and he now makes a living as a fifth-rate John Tesh in a Russian dive.   Enter the titular Apollo Justice, an oh-so-pure defense attorney who's about to be touched for the very first time.  So how is it?

Well, the gameplay is practically unchanged.  There are some investigation elements that take advantage of the console's touch screen and 3D capabilities, and some nifty FMV sequences have been thrown in.  Otherwise, it's standard Ace Attorney fare:  tap through menus, follow dialogue tree, progress to next section, repeat as desired.

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Someone help Rich G from the anxieties of life.

Why do I do it to myself? Why, when I've got a barely-played copy of BioShock and a hardly-touched Orange Box sitting there just mocking me, do I still go out and buy Burnout Paradise, Assassin's Creed, and Mass Effect? 

Why did I even buy BioShock and The Orange Box when I didn't even get through an hour of Halo 3 or Call of Duty 4?

Why did I remotely consider picking up Ratchet and Clank Future, play it (and love it) for 3 levels, only to then go get Uncharted?

Why did I even bother with Halo 3 or Call of Duty 4 or Ratchet in the first place when I still have unopened, shrink-wrapped copies of The Godfather on 360, Yakuza and Bully on PS2?

Every night I come home and think, tonight is the night I start to plow through these games. Then I become paralyzed by the myriad choices in front of me when I do finally sit down after work, putting the 7-month-old to bed, exercise (on a good night), dinner, then working some more to make sure I keep my job.

I have a disease, friends. And I need to cure it. And it starts tonight.

I will not play any more games until I at least finish Portal.

There, I said it.

Did someone say GTA IV is actually coming out soon?