Have you seen that ISP commercial that features Mr. Average Internet "Surfer" being assaulted by popup ads? The commercial goes on to exhult the ISP's anti-popup software. What I find amusing is that Mr. Average is clearly really into internet porn, if I'm to judge by the number of popups per second he seems to be triggering.

Maybe they should call their technology Porn-o-Saver or AdFreePorn. Enjoy your favorite fetishes, Windows Media movies, celeb screengrab montages and other assorted alluring materials completely free of advertisements! The biggest advancement in one-handed surfing since the invention of the mouse.

Matt picked up his iPod months ago, and we've had some pretty gnarly AIM arguments about the gadget. One of my biggest problems was the price. $400 for 10gig of music? Music? As I've said before, music just isn't my bag. There's one group that I'm passionate about (They Might Be Giants), most of my other favorites stem from college days, and everything else can go hang. I generally consider music to be even lower on the Interest totem pole than movies/tv... and I have an extremely low opinion of that entertainment wasteland. (If you're making a chart, I place sports even further down.)

So why did I buy one? I think I can trace it back to one moment. Mike and I had started playing Doomtown, and he suggested we play some background music. And I had nothing to play. Rather, I had plenty of cds, but nothing to play them with.

We've been avoiding the Animal Crossing Strategy Guide like Pennsylvania drivers avoid turn signals. It was our contention that an all-encompassing guide would ruin the slow, gradual experience of the game. And since playing Animal Crossing doesn't require consulting maps or complex locked door puzzles, we've managed to muddle through the intricacies of letter writing, furniture placement and item collecting without a formal guide. Sarcasm.

That said, we've found plenty of hints and tips online - I doubt we would ever have found about the daily magic money rock without help - so it's not like we're playing in a vaccuum. The various message boards and websites are like peepholes into the guide itself, allowing us to just search out exactly what we need without presenting the entirety of the game's scope in one thick document.

This time of year doesn't do much for me. As usual, I feel attacked by pointless traditions and holiday demands.

Christmas cards. I really want to stop this one. They're expensive, they're time consuming, and they all get thrown away December 26th. I especially like getting cards from relatives we never see, featuring some appropriate quote of scripture. If you don't know if your recipient is Christian, don't send the Happy God Bible Card. That's what Santa is for. And kittens.

It is my goal to protect Adamsvil from all invading nations. Although I have negotiated mutually beneficial treaties of peace with the neighboring territories, it is only prudent to keep the populace in a position of strong defense and able to militarize should need arise. Here's how Adamsvil looks, here in December 2002, marking only my fourth month of Town Regent.

I don't know how I stumble into these things, but this website has a pretty amazing theory to explain the plot of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. Of course, it's presented in an incredibly stupid format that feels like someone's html training experiment, but maybe that's part of the point. The article fully explains several ideas that came to my mind while playing (and plenty of other theories), but I did not have the research and reasoning behind me to put all these pieces together.

MGS2 was skewered by a major anti-plot backlash a year ago, which I always felt was just a typically disgruntled and jaded response to the incredible amount of hype that preceded the game's launch. I also feel it was mainly funded by stupid people. I personally thought that MGS2 had a fantastic plot, marred only by the over-reliance on codec text screens... screens that made sense from an in-game perspective but often became tedious to click through from a real life perspective.

OK, you've had a weekend to see The Two Towers. Time to talk about it now.

This one strays a bit more from the books. When Fellowship differed from the books, it was generally because Peter Jackson had to leave stuff out. In Two Towers, he seems to be putting stuff in. By and large, it's perfectly okay, because the added bits resonate with other scenes... in short, the tweaks make sense, from a movie perspective.

TNN plans to run a video game awards show, sometime around the end of 2003.

The Video Game Awards will honor the best video games as voted by players and fans. Categories will include: Hottest Hero and Heroine, Most Addictive, Coolest Villain, Best All-Around Badass, Most Difficult to Master, Best Free For All Carnage, Best Soundtrack, Hottest Graphics, Best Kick Ass Weapon, Best Game based on a Movie and Best Celebrity Actor and Actress in a Game, Best Pro-Sports Game. In addition, games will be competing for the Hall of Fame Award and Game of the Year.

That is the saddest, weakest, most depressing list of awards ever. As per normal, video games will come off as juvenile and shallow. Why not include "Most Graphic Gore," "Most Likely To Inspire Sniper Rampage," and "Best Use of Tits."

Blast Corps is really about one thing - driving vehicles through cities and suburbs, and laying waste to them. Obstensibly, it all has a purpose, but forget all that for right now. You drive vehicles into buildings until they fall over, then do it some more. The entire game is about that. Big explosions? Check. Sound effects of things crunching? Check. If you're a guy, and I know I am, this should appeal to the lizard part of your brain. You know, the part that likes jokes about testicles and laughs whenever you see a cat falling off of something on America's Funniest Home Videos? It's been scientifically determined, and by that, I mean I just made this up, that the lizard part of your brain hails back to our puniest brained ancestors, who, when they first started walking on land, liked exploding stuff. Today, modern man must struggle to suppress these urges and build up a utopian society, all the while wondering exactly how cool it'd be if all the stuff in the world blew up with lots of fire. This is probably the reason that we don't have peace in our time, and it's probably the reason Blast Corps got made.

Rocket: Robot on Wheels is a really innovative gimmick platformer. Rocket, the robot, has two things going for it that all other platformers after it have yet to duplicate ‚ it can pick up nearly every object in the game (including enemies) and manipulate them, and Rocket is on a single wheel. The former makes puzzles a lot of fun, because they're more innovative than "Go here, touch that sprite, come back and drop off the sprite" (standard fare in most of Rare's games) ‚ you literally have to carry the sprite, throw it over obstacles if need be, and dodge enemies which will steal the item you're carrying. The latter is fun because, being a wheeled character, you don't exactly stop when you stop pushing the control stick. Rocket gradually rolls to a halt, and if he's on a slope, it takes a lot longer. This takes getting used to, much the same way that the generic ice levels that all platformers since Super Mario Bros. 2 have invoked, except it's a lot more subtle than "Snow makes things slippery."

From its inception, this was supposed to be a different game. Rare unveiled Dinosaur Planet, which was a really compelling looking game, for the N64. Then the N64 began to decline (read: dropped like a hot potato) when the next gen consoles began making their debut, and the GameCube (aka Project Dolphin) really took the wind out of designer's sails. Somewhere between making the transition from N64 game to GC game, the Big N told Rare to make this a Starfox game.

I can see the poor toady who had to suck up this decision, throwing months of creative work into the crapper just to make the switch to Starfox. Starfox, which at best has recognizable characters, really didn't seem like a good pot to fish likeable 3D platformer characters out of. And indeed, it ain't. At least, not in this particular outing.

In the spirit of the season, I forged a trade agreement with neighboring Holliday with the end goal of railroading Jingle out of his entire stock of gifts. Unfortunately, he outfoxxed both towns and we ended up with 12 out of 13 special items.

Which left myself and Holliday native RhondaCat looking nervously over the table at each other, silently wondering who would reap the larger share of the uneven booty. It was a tough negotiation, but I walked away with 11 unique items and she took all the duplicates and the Jingle Shirt.

Today, December 25th, is a special day for America. You and your family will probably celebrate this day every year, gathering for warm fireside chats, delicious homemade dinners, and introspective spiritual moments.

For today, Boris has provided THREE new video game reviews to fourhman.com.