February 2005 Archives

As much as I like the Ratchet & Clank series, I'm surprised it doesn't get slapped around more for repeating itself. IGN.com has given each entry in the series steadily increasing scores... and good scores to boot. 9.2, 9.4, 9.6. Obviously you don't adjust old scores when new games come out, but the leap from 2 to 3 is nowhere near the leap from 1 to 2... far greater than two tenths of a point. The second game (Going Commando) added in the asteroid worlds, upgradeable weapons and a far improved HP system. The third game (Up Your Arsenal) is really just more of Game 2. (Gamerankings.com shows 89.3, 91.8, 92.3.)

Which is no bad thing. Just not much of a new thing. Arsenal is at times annoyingly identical to Commando, which kind of saps the drive to continue playing. What bugs me the most is the visual/physical similarities. Lots of worlds are comprised of graphics and buildings that are lifted wholesale from previous games with little or no improvement. They're even recycling the same Globetrotters' spin animation whenever Ratchet picks up a new item or titanium bolt. Of course, Arsenal adds in a robust online mode, which has to be upping the score substantially.

By contrast, IGN rates the Mario Party series comparatively poorly across the versions and routinely attacks the series for being more of the same thing every year. No Mario Party edition has ever scored higher than 7.9 (except the card game version, oddly enough): 7.9, 7.9, 6.4, 6.9, 7.9, 7.0. IGN disagrees, but I maintain that the worst games in the series are 2 and 4, because both of those had a shallow pool of minigames. Gamerankings.com shows 77.8, 76.6, 73.6, 73.7, 70.7, 72.8. I just don't see how people can think the first Mario Party was the best in the series, especially given the visual upgrades of the GameCube versions and how 6 has dropped in entirely new board game objectives.

I can understand a reviewer preferring Ratchet & Clank to Mario Party, but I think Ratchet (three games in three years) seems to have earned a free pass on sequel scores... whereas Mario Party (six games in six years) is now the sub-franchise everyone loves to hate.

Anyway, I still like Up Your Arsenal; it just feels like I'm playing through Going Commando again. Kind of like using Sonic & Knuckles' LOCK-ON technology to play through Sonic 3 again. And I'm trying to sell it to my pals so we can play online. I did some online play the other night. As usual, the voice chat was hilarious... listening to my team members complain about cheap kills and issue half-hearted tactics instructions. I jumped into one game that was clearly deathmatch, and yet the guys playing insisted that some sort of imaginary teams existed. I started shooting at somebody else of another color and he started yelling "Don't shoot at me! Don't shoot at me!" So I stopped, and sure enough, I was apparantly on his "team." I followed him around just so I could see exactly who I was supposed to kill. The only rationale I can imagine is that they wanted to play teams but maintain voice chat with all players (normal team play restricts voice chat to your own team members.) I eventually gave Rhonda the headset so she could listen in... it's a good time to hear all these voices deep in the game chattering at each other. Very little swearing too.

I was playing until 3:00am last night, going through all the Annihilation Nation arena missions. They've become some of my favorite levels because they're pure combat, held in a circular gladiators' arena. It's just you and the horde piling out of the arena gates. Once you fully upgrade your favorite weapons, these battles become carefully orchestrated ballets of carnage. Tip for the arena mega-monsters: take a maxxed out (level 5) sniper rifle in against the two fatties. You'll erase their health before they can even complete one cycle of attacks. As for Scorpio, the big insect tank thing, I used my V5 Agents of Dread and peppered the floor with V5 Megaturrets. You'll have to avoid his sweeping lasers for about 8 seconds before the ancillary fire takes him down. The V5 weapons make all the difference!

Holy crap that Liquid Nitrogen Gun is so awesome.

And yes, Arsenal does give you bonuses if it can find save files for 1 and 2 on your memory card. So copy all the Ratchet saves into one disk, because it's always nice to get new weapons for free.

Let's end on a down note. Captain Qwark. I hated him in R&C1, I hated him in R&C2, and I continue to hate him in R&C3. He's yet another unfunny cowardly superhero parody. Like Sly Cooper's Bentley and Murray, I would love to see Qwark erased from the mythos. The only thing that saves the character is that Ratchet feels the same way I do, and I'm amused by his exasperated efforts to derail Qwark.

So there's this upcoming post-op new wave Looney Tunes cartoon coming, where the usual Warner Bros favorites are remade into futuristic super heroes. It's all over the internet and most people seem to hate it. The concept video (which is also readily found online, although I have a broadcast quality version of it on my desk at work, hyuck) begins with an old-style animation table - the kind that hasn't been used since 1950 - with a cel of six classic Warner characters. Well, five classic characters (Bugs, Daffy, Road Runner, Wile E. Coyote and the Tazmanian Devil) and Lola Bunny, the female rabbit counterpart created for Space Jam. We can debate the merits of including Lola all night. What's the current internet lexography for the rolling of eyes?

Then the animator gets pulled away from the table and knocks over the inkwell (something else that hasn't seen use since 1950). The ink proceeds to boil over the characters, turning them into something else. Something fresh. Something different. Then the voiceover begins nattering about how the world of 2772 needs heroes, blah blah blah, while dissolving in borrowed footage from newscasters of previous WB animated series. When the ink fades, the six have been re-created in angular, thick lines... no pupils (representing domino masks, I suppose)... lots of black with character-specific color highlights. Then a zoom-in to the rabbit's face, and he snidely and suggestively says "What's up, doc?" The narrator reveals herself to be Maxima (Montana Maxima?), a Charlie of sorts who has gathered these six heroes to rip off the Teen Titans.

The characters are each introduced... they have new names, so this character isn't Bugs Bunny... he's Buzz Bunny. His superpower is laser eyes and he's "good with his hands," which I found weird. Road Runner has super-speed; name: Roadster. Wile E. can regenerate (hah!) and is now Slick. Lola (?), the master of disguise (??), is Lexi (???) The Tazmanian Devil is Spaz - which made me laugh - and he's strong. Probably still stupid, too. Daffy is now simply Duck, so the well-played "no respect" gag continues. His deal is weaponry.

I actually kind of dig the new character designs.

Although the inkwell bit wants to indicate otherwise, these six super heroes really aren't meant to be Bugs Bunny Turned Into An Extreme Future Hero. I think they're supposed to be entirely new characters, inspired by (re-imagined?) the original Looney Tunes. Oh, and it's called "Loonatics."

Okay, so this isn't the most creative thing in the world.

Fifteen years ago, I probably would have been a lot angrier about it. Defacing the classic characters, sacrilige, dishonoring a legacy. (Fifteen years ago, you could still catch the original material every weeknight in a two hour block on TNT.) Today I'm having trouble mustering up that level of interest.

Many fans are outraged, even though the Looney Tunes cast has already been re-vamped half a dozen times already. As far as I'm concerned, Bugs et. al. stopped being "good" circa 1954. Their shorts from the '50s and '60s (especially the '60s) almost totally suck. Don't tell me there wasn't a creative reboot inside the mother ship even back then. I remember watching the Looney Tunes cartoons on Saturday morning as my Dad pointed out the difference in quality between the older stuff and the newer stuff. Not only in artistic quality (less animation, minimalist backgrounds) but in music, in scripts... in the sudden appearance of disasterously bankrupt characters like Cool Cat.

In the '70s and '80s, the characters were reduced to complete and utter shells inside all those horrible made-for-TV specials and movies. Bugs Bunny and the Arabian Nights. Or that Easter special where Bugs tries to get his nephew to appreciate learning about history. I don't recall anyone storming the Warners lot over that one, and it's the Looney Tunes equivalent to the Star Wars Holiday Special. And I know I'm stepping on sacred ground here, but Mel Blanc's voice talents were on a slow fade in his later years, and it is difficult to hear his final work on the characters without wincing tenderly.

Tiny Toons. Tiny Toons is more or less functionally identical to Loonatics. Take the classic cast and re-present them as kids. Who didn't look at the first episode of TTA and think "What, is this the Warner version of Muppet Babies, with attitude?" There's an example of a revamp that came out fine.

And speaking of attitude, how about Space Jam? Remember when those awful hip-hop t-shirts were everywhere with Bugs and Daffy scowling, dressed in low-slung baggy jeans and basketball jerseys? And when the Tazmanian Devil was turned into an icon for the disassociated moron as "Taz"? They were EXTREME.

Followed by: Baby Looney Tunes. Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries. Duck Dodgers. When haven't these guys been made over into something else? With varying degrees of success, of course.

WB is never going to duplicate the classic wartime/post-wartime era of these characters - a Mesozoic Era, considering everything that has happened since. But the good news is they're not going to storm into your home and steal your Looney Tunes Volume 1 DVD boxed set either. I think the sad truth is that the Looney Tunes characters, in their original 1940s forms, just aren't terribly relevant to kids today. Did anyone go see Back In Action aside from some animation nuts and a couple families with free passes from a cereal box? Back In Action was supposedly a fairly respectful treatment of Bugs and company in their "classic" forms. Sassy, anvils-falling-from-sky, etc. Did anyone care?

So. Given that Back In Action was more or less a flop. Given that Duck Dodgers (which actually does a decent job on Daffy's character, I think) isn't exactly burning up Cartoon Network ratings with kids. Given that time is marching on and the original shorts are steadily turning into museum pieces that nobody wants to run anymore.

Given all that, what exactly is WB supposed to do with all that equity they're sitting on?

Either accept that the whims of kid fads aren't with them on this anymore and give up... or invent something [almost] new with it and give it a shot. They're giving it a shot - albeit by aping the modern Power Rangers-style standard in heroic boys action shows - and it's not the worst thing in the world.

Disney has been facing the same trouble with Mickey Mouse for pretty much the identical amount of time. His visual development is forever frozen circa 1950. Nobody runs the original shorts. His biggest contribution for decades was as a corporate icon and theme park host... and nobody at Disney even knew how to resurrect him (while the Ducks, Chip 'n Dale, and the Jungle Book cast were all living large in new Disney Afternoon shows) because he turned into an intrinsically boring character. He was even too boring to lecture kids about going to school in an Easter special. Disney knew they had to do something, or else kids would start growing up with little to no exposure to the character as a character, so they slowly found work for him. An embarrassingly minor role in Mickey's Christmas Carol. Prince and the Pauper. Runaway Brain. Mickey MouseWorks. And my favorite, touring his empty house at DisneyWorld. The House of Mouse cartoon is the end result of all that soul searching, and it's not a bad one. And Kingdom Hearts, but I'm not sure how much of that concepting was Disney and how much was actually Disney fans inside Square Enix in Japan.

Although they didn't strike out Mickey's pupils and give him a super-power. They can at least say that much.

That Loonatics video claims the show will premiere this fall on Kids WB. So either they're further along than that low-budget video suggests, or they think they can turn this around in six months. Given the bad press they're getting over it, maybe it won't happen in this form anyway... which makes all the fan forum bitching even more jejune.

The best you can say is that you would prefer that they do nothing, rather than do Loonatics. Time Warner shareholders would say otherwise, that the company has assets that ought to be exploited. At the very least, Loonatics doesn't look like another groupthink cash-in like Baby Looney Tunes or souless pandering like the holiday clip show specials.

I think the Elite Four battle took me an hour, maybe an hour and a half. That's one time through, no restarts. The Four consists of Lorelei, Bruno, Agatha and Lance. As I expected, the Agatha battle was the first difficult one.

I ended the internal debate on which fighters to register by splitting the difference: Gyarados would be my EXP-receiving chump and Zapdos would fill out the 6th slot as additional high-level insurance. Every single opposing pokemon in the Elite Four is above level 50, going up as high as level 60. So my team entered a little below that average. Yeah, my Blastoise and Gengar are beefy battlers, but the rest all centered around 50 (with that young Gyarados checking in around 40). So I had to be ready with some good items in backup: Revive, Full Restore, Max Potion, and my favorite health item: Fresh Water.

Lorelei was not much of an issue at all. I toyed with her for a while before sending in my Gengar to finish her off. Bruno was even less of a challenge... Surf, Surf, Surf. Agatha's annoying evasive Gengar and confusion attacks can get tiresome. I think the secret is to bash out her first Gengar as quickly as possible, so it doesn't have to confuse you and get so quick that it avoids all your later attacks. Lance wasn't too bad, another casualty to my heavy hitters.

Then I faced the League Champion, none other than Liquid. He fielded a Venusaur, Pidgeot, Rhydon, Arcanine, Alakazam and Gyarados. Growlithe Flamethrowered the Venusaur. Gengar flattened the Alakazam in one hit (Shadow Ball). Blastoise Surfed over the Arcanine. The rest were taken out by some big attacks, plus using a Resting Snorlax to stall for time to heal up the damage.

The battle ended and Liquid gave the usual "I can't believe you beat me!" speech... then Professor Oak dashes in and proceeds to give Liquid a brow-beating on how to treat pokemon with love and kindness. On his way out, Liquid references going to One Island, a veiled hint that you should also go there once the credits finish rolling.

Here's my winning team. In retrospect, the Zapdos was a cheap throw-in. I used his Thunder Wave to paralyze a couple guys, and his Fly attack here and there... but other than that, he was barely touched. I'm always very personal with my pokemon, favoring those I've spent more time with... so Zapdos (whom I caught at level 50) felt like a ringer.

Growlithe level 50	Blastoise level 57	Gengar level 62	Gyarados level 41	Snorlax level 50	Zapdos level 51

Oh, duh. Growlithe requires the Fire Stone to evolve. FR/LG have a ton of pokemon who evolve with the various elemental stones - including Eevee - so you can actually buy Stones at the Celadon Department Store for a reasonable price.

So now for the traditional Pokemon Second Quest. This time we venture back out to the Island chain (as Liquid suggested). I'm annoyed he's still a part of the game; I'd prefer he slink back off into the darkness. I've already checked in with Celio on One Island. He wants a Ruby, for use in a piece of tech that will enable "pokemon trading with people far away." Now, we're not jumping on a wi-fi hotspot anytime soon, so Celio must be referring to activating link trades with Ruby/Sapphire. I'm hoping against hope that I can dredge up a Dragon Scale here in LeafGreen, so I can use that to evolve myself a Kingdra to trade back into Sapphire.

Time: 45:46
Badges: 8
Pokedex: 90 (Seen: 142)
Party: Growlithe lv50, Weepinbell lv40, Katamari (Meowth) lv39, Gengar lv63, Poliwhirl lv26, Zapdos lv51

Thought I'd do a cat update. It will not be long before Zoe turns one, and I'm slowly starting to think that the worst is behind us. As she storms out of kittenhood, she's bothering Annie less and causing less trouble around the house.

We're not there yet. She will still pounce on Annie for no reason, or suddenly fashion an interest in something on the kitchen countertop... but it's nowhere near the crazy claw-and-fang kitten attitude we had half a year ago. She may always be more vertically oriented than Annie, meaning we may never break her of scaling shelves or jumping up to the kitchen sink, and that's just going to be her personality. She's also much more stubborn than Annie. Zoe usually needs to be yelled at (or physically removed) two or three times before she'll give up on something, like batting at a window blind pull or climbing over Rhonda's vanity at 3am. After the first warning, she'll just turn around and go immediately back to it. It's actually sort of cute, when it's not 3am.

Those fake cat claws I mentioned before? Even more awesome. Now that she's less violent, the claws last even longer. We're at the point now that we can go for a week or two without having to replace even one of them... while during the height of Crazy Kitten Time we were gluing on a new claw nearly every day.

Here's Zoe today. Full grown, but still kitten-lithe. I tell ya, I like having an all-black cat. Even her nose, lips and whiskers are black. She can cut a pretty scary figure if she wants to... a shadow with glowing eyes and white fangs. And the red claws. Owing to cat aging curves, we place Zoe as roughly the equivalent of a 15 year old human, and Annie is about 55.

Our biggest cat development has been the creation of our Litter Arena. The problem of litter bits getting tracked all over the house has tripled lately. We have to blame impetuous youth for most of it, although Annie certainly drags her share around, being a longhair. So here's what we did:

That is my former 8 foot gaming table, repurposed as the cats' poop parapet. Their respective litter domes are at the end of the path, and the inset table is lined with the honeycombed plastic tracks used for flourescent lighting in drop ceilings. The idea being that the litter on their paws will fall off into the grooves of the 6-7 feet they have to walk to escape the arena. Note that we positioned the trail between the basement's cinder block wall and a faux partition to keep the cats from circumventing the path entirely.

The use of the eggshell lighting cover actually comes from my Mom, who had a similar piece built for her cats. Mom took it one step further and enclosed the whole thing inside a box, so the cats would have to jump up and over to escape the trap.

It definitely traps a huge portion of the litter they carry out of the boxes. Not all of it, invariably some particles will make it upstairs to the kitchen/living room anyway... plus their feet isn't the only place cats can carry litter around, ahem. Still, seems like a good idea. Or at least a funny one.

I'm devoted. I'm willing to stick by a once-great franchise through lean times in silent hope of a return to greatness.

For example, Resident Evil.

I remember watching commercials for Resident Evil 2, before I even owned a PlayStation. I knew it was a Big Game. Thinking back to my early PlayStation library, getting RE2 was a real eye-opener. It showed me that games could tell stories, that content could be gory and adult, and that cutscenes could be worth watching. I jumped when the zombie arms smashed through the window in the police station corridor. I collected keys shaped like chess pieces. I finished the game and considered it a genuine accomplishment.

Then I jumped back to the first Resident Evil. Similar fun, cheesier tone. "Master of unlocking" and all that.

I was there for the release of Resident Evil 3: Nemesis. I was angry when Resident Evil: Code Veronica launched as a Dreamcast exclusive... then angrier when the PS2 port came out and I found out that I couldn't get past the mid-point boss fight in the airplane. I enjoyed most of the GameCube remake of Resident Evil 1, but by this point I had largely moved on to Fatal Frame for my survival horror. And Disaster Report, but that is best not mentioned.

RE Dead Aim was good, for a light gun game. RE Outbreak was terrible, for any kind of game. I never picked up RE Gun Survivor or Resident Evil Zero. I probably would have liked Zero at least as much as Nemesis or the Cube RE, but it just seemed less than necessary.

Because there's now this creeping mediocrity in the RE games, best defined by adherance to game elements that should have long been abandoned. Capcom must have been aware of this, the idea that Resident Evil as a franchise was standing on a precipice... and that most gamers were expecting it to jump right in and complete the transformation into pure crap. Much as did Crash Bandicoot, Sonic, and Tomb Raider.

So Capcom did the right thing and reinvented Resident Evil. And for Nintendo, of all companies. Resident Evil 4 is the overhaul you've been waiting for, the game that redeems the franchise and rewards the faithful. I beat Dead Aim, dammit, and this is my reward.

I started playing RE4 Saturday night around 9 or 10pm. (I prefer playing these sorts of games at night.) And I didn't stop until 6:30am. That's how gripped I was. In that time I got all the way to the Castle. Which, actually, I thought was a bit of a letdown. The outdoor environments and enemies are so good, I wanted to stay with them rather than enter the Dr. Doom castle and fight monk enemies.

RE4 finally lets you play the one classic moment that previously always popped up as a non-interactive cutscene: when the hero(es) find themselves in an enclosed area, surrounded by hordes of enemies piling in through the doors and windows. ...You're in a village, under attack by the hynotized? mind-controlled? infected? villagers that are totally not zombies (rolls eyes). You can try shooting them through the boarded up windows, or shoving furniture in front of them, but eventually they'll bust through. Then they push in the door. Run up the stairs and they will follow you. The outside group will prop up ladders against the second story windows (you can push the ladders away, but they'll just pick them up again.) To get through it, you have to shoot like crazy and just endure it. It was glorious.

Even though they improved so many things (better controls, smarter enemies, true aiming on different body parts, 3D environments, no annoying loading doors, nicer map, more ammo), there's still some bits left in to remind you you're playing a Resident Evil game. Green herbs, first aid sprays, typewriters as save points, and a light puzzle here and there. It's nostalgia done right.

And then there's this crazy merchant who sounds like a pirate. He shows up at "safe" points on the map to sell you upgraded weapons and buy the gaudy treasures you've collected. He's the most obvious gamey concession in the whole thing... a weird presence who has yet to be explained and is blatantly incongruous with the rest of the setting. I'd almost rather hero Leon Kennedy mail order new gear and have it drop from the sky... if the merchant's pirate accent wasn't so funny.

Although the game is going to great lengths to avoid the usual T-Virus infection plotline - in fact, the opening movie mentions that Umbrella has finally been shut down by the government - there is clearly still some mutationin' goin' on. Initially, the villager enemies seem like angry rural mob fodder... tossing farm implements at you while speaking real Spanish at each other. But it doesn't take long before one of them turns into a Spaghetti Head: the human head explodes and an ugly worm thing with spiky tendrils pours up out of the neck. Still keeps the host body though. You can actually encourage the development of a Spaghetti with accurate headshots. However, I would rather not spawn Spaghetti Heads, so I've been re-teaching myself to aim for the kneecaps.

Although this was originally a Nintendo GameCube exclusive, Capcom has since announced a PS2 version. Most commentators find it hard to believe that they will be able to compress a game this beautiful down into a PS2, and I would have to agree. I suppose it is possible with sacrifice. It will be interesting to see if the baselined PS2 version will outsell the GameCube version. If the PS2 port happens, we won't see it until 2006.

This is probably speculation, but the bits where Leon uses his video phone to talk to his mission supervisor... the screen looks a lot like an unfolded GBA SP. Suppose that at one point - back when Nintendo was pushing the GBA/Cube connectivity thing (pause for emotional sigh) - suppose that the original plan was to have the CO talk to you via a connected SP? Just a thought. A technogasmic, quasi-immersive thought.

Best part: I left my car's dome light on during my entire Resident Evil 4 eight to nine hour session. I didn't realize it until Rhon (who stayed up to watch most of the game; it is that good) looked out the window at 5 in the a.m. The car started up fine the next day.

I beat the game Friday night - well, finished the main storyline missions anyway. I believe my game percentage comes in just under %70, and the clock (which, as usual, would not include any unsaved restarts) shows over 80 hours. Yeah, that's no Animal Crossing or Pokemon Sapphire, but it's damn fine investment.

Although the last few missions cover a citywide riot (which even goes on inbetween missions, which I loved) and a nail-biting action movie ending, I thought it could have used a bit more buildup. Particularly when it comes to the Big Smoke sting. Maybe some recon missions to see what he's up to, play up his crack fortress as a truly major league destination. As it is, you're told about his fortress and demolish that fortress in one mission.

The final beat with Toreno seemed unresolved. I was anticipating him going down on Hamburger Hill at some point. Consider him for placement in GTA4.

I thought it was interesting that the game brought CJ back to the mean streets of Los Santos for the final act. I mean, it's probably very expected, given the nature of his initial exile... but I liked the way they did it. After starting a new life in San Fierro and hitting the big time in Las Venturas, I (and CJ) really didn't care to come back. Big brother Sweet essentially makes CJ return to the Grove, to clean up the home gang and wipe out the others. The Johnson boys' attack over Los Santos has a nice anti-drug message, but I was still like "Who cares, I now own a mansion by the Vinewood sign." So I was right there with CJ resisting the big Return to Los Santos. I understood it. And then I felt like a chump when Sweet lectures CJ about Mom and Grove Street and being selfish. That's identification for you.

Not to mention that I had already owned 100% of the gang territories back in the first section of the gang, and now I had to re-take all of them again. Also, the missions that force you to take over sections in Glen Park and Idlewood, respectively, ticked me off. I'd start the mission, drive over there, and then walk around for hours waiting for the game to spawn some Ballas so I could trigger a gang war. Mr. Game Maker, you know why I'm here, you assigned me the mission, so spawn the Ballas immediately!

But, if I may venture into a little literary criticism of the storyline, what CJ ends up with after all is said and done is a brand new family. It covers different types of people from all over the state, and some of them aren't even that shady. When you first meet CJ, he's stuck in a gang, fighting for the streets. Predictably, that falls apart as greed splits up these "old friends" - if they can even honestly term themselves as such, I'd say that their friendship probably comes more from sheer Grove Street proximity than anything else. CJ learns to make new friends, from other cultures... Latin, Chinese, Jewish, British, even crazy old white man The Truth (who was voiced by Peter Fonda, I was surprised to realize.) In the finale, they're presented as one big happy family... which is a long way from the mercenary loner scenario of GTA3 and the Scarface-style untouchable monarch ending to Vice City.

On to the photos!

This is a nice little nod to all the silly tourist trap attractions and oversized fiberglas signage that dot our fine country's rural roadsides. Whenever I see another huge animal sculpture, I'm reminded of a bit in the Sam & Max comics where Max sees a sign and says "Look Max! The World's Largest Guinea Pig!" And Sam replies "If it was that big, we wouldn't have to stop." This is clearly a chicken you don't have to stop for, found somewhere in the desert section of San Andreas.

Is this an Easter Egg? Probably not, it's too obvious. In the mission where you break into the city building to get the floor plans for Caligula's Casino, the far room has this Rockstar-inspired skyscraper model.

Millie, waving for the camera. I like how certain NPCs will recognize you have a camera at them and pose for you. This was taken after Millie decided to show up for a date finally... which, at near as I can guess, is something that resets after you do a storyline mission. So if you're having trouble getting a girlfriend to appear at the times the FAQ swears by, go do a mission and then check back. Dumb.

This is inside Millie's house, which is decorated in a... uh... gothic flair. I think her place is one of those locations you can only visit once, which is why I took the picture.

I found this rack of cereal boxes inside one of the convenience stores in the rural zone north of Los Santos. It's a crappy texture, but the character on that box is definitely Senor Sandwich of Gobler Toys (see inset). The cereal is even called "Senorios". Now the question is raised: did Rockstar get permission to use Senor's likeness in the game, or did they just Google "weird cereal mascots" and come upon a picture of Senor Sandwich that they assumed was public domain? I know a guy who knows a guy who's behind the Gobler Toys (fake) website, but I don't think I'll be the one to tell him of this possible infringement.

Riot! Once the riot starts (in response to Officer Tenpenny getting off a murder rap), the game turns Los Santos into a city-wide riot zone. Buildings are on fire, people are brawling in the streets, and my favorite: random citizens making off with television sets.

See, this is what I mean by not enough buildup on the Big Smoke finale. This massive statue is inside his crack fortress, intimating that he's some kind of gangsta god... which he isn't. I would have liked more action from his supposed crime ring, to lend the end sequence more drama.

Last note: the game hosed my final save file, taken right after I finished the final mission. It's actually no big deal, since I save all the time, so my second-to-last save file lands immediately before that final mission. I have no idea how it happened, but I'll repair the damage by doing the last bit over again. It's a scary screen though: "Load Failed! Restarting the game now..." and then it starts a brand new game with CJ flying out of Liberty City. Yikes! So instead of loading the last save, I loaded the penultimate save with that new game and re-saved that one (because GTA always auto-loads your newest save file on boot) so I should not experience any further bad loads. Now I get to see the happy ending all over again.

During the brief moments I can detach the PS2 from being a dedicated San Andreas machine, I played through some demos I recently received in the mail. The Getaway: Black Monday and God of War.

Short version: God of War is a really good demo, and Getaway is a really bad one.

I remember playing a demo of the first Getaway... it was positioned as a huge PS2 title. In fact, early screenshots of Getaway's supposed photo-realistic vision of modern day London were on the streets before the PS2 even came out. At the time, I was looking forward to it, but it dropped off the radar for far too long. Then it re-surfaced, mailed me a demo, and I called Mike 20 minutes later to report that it was merely okay. Gimpy controls, boring driving, with some non-traditional ideas about HP meters and such.

Getaway 2 seems to have addressed none of the failings of the first one. At least, comparing demo to demo. Controlling the lead character is still gimpy, driving is still boring (I guess they're aiming for realistic) and they still seem to think that gamers who think a visible life bar is an illusion-breaking eyesore won't be bothered by a system that allows you to heal up by leaning against a wall.

The demo has a nice open. Very arty. Then the open repeats itself unless you press a button. Then the game begins, and you're a midget cop. Well, maybe not a midget, but definitely deformed in some way. He (I forget his name, probably Officer Hardboiled or something) has a big head, no neck, and is considerably shorter than the other cops in the first level. Who make you drive to the crime scene, probably because you're the short cop they all bust on. The game's hype machine makes a big deal about how the characters are all modelled and mo-capped from real life actors. In which case, they either hired a midget or did the Officer Gritty actor a real injustice. He looks ridiculous.

Then to driving. Remember, you're in London, so switch your traffic lanes around. Yeah, it looks fine. I'd love to drive around the map and see sights I recall from our honeymoon over there, but the demo isn't going to encourage that. There is a ton of cars on the road - again, realism - which makes driving fast nearly impossible. And every time you scrape somebody, you risk losing the level due to "you've committed too much crime!" Ugh.

The Getaway series has the weird idea that a game will feel more cinematic if it is stripped of life meters and ammo counts and maps. It is a laudable notion, but an impractical one that foolishly denies how video games work. For instance, rather than giving you an in-game map of London with your destination marked... you have to follow your own car's turn signals. So like, you're heading down a street, and when your left blinker comes on, you know you have to take the next left. Although I like the concept, it doesn't work at all. It's too easy to miss a turn, get completely lost, and end up driving in circles trying to figure out where your signals are trying to get you to go. Plus, the turn signals aren't necessarily going to tell you the best way to get there, resulting in needless zig-zagging through back alley paths that you only thought were a swift route to the goal.

Once you get to the crime scene - which is an indoor boxing training arena carefully modelled from a real life location, by the way - then you have to walk through shooting down nameless enemies. This is where you really notice how stupid Officer Barbrady looks, and you wonder why no one on the dev team stepped up and said "Maybe we should make him look less like a neckless freak."

You know, I don't recall getting any instruction on what the buttons do in the demo. I mean, the car thing is obvious; PS2 car games almost always use the same gas/brake/e-brake setup these days. But at this point in the demo, I was testing every button to see what I should be doing... mainly because I was being shot at and had no idea how to shoot back. Once I figured it out, I had taken a lot of damage... which is indicated only by a growing blood stain soaking through his bullet-proof vest and the sound clip "I don't think I can make it." Which means, in the Getaway World, it's time for Officer Takesnoguff to lean against the nearest wall. For a full minute.

Presto. Blood stain evaporates. I still don't see how a complete game stoppage for healing is preferable (and more realistic) than picking up a Green Herb or Medipac. I'm more inclined to think the Getaway Team are just dopey about these things and there will be no consoling them. They're sticking to their arbitrary no-HUD rules and that's that.

The worst bit about walking and shooting was when I had to go down into an unlit area. Officer Payne has a flashlight with the most focused light beam in the universe. Add a stodgy control scheme and it's damn near impossible to properly survey a dark room. I managed to get lost in a room with only one exit, because turning around is so inexact and the light beam is so small. And no, you can't have a map in here either, mate.

So it's an awful demo. From what I read, there's a decent storyline and impressive virtual acting... but I'm not about to suffer through utter crap and Officer Noggin to get to it. I think these guys are hamstrung by an overzealous mission statement (Thou Shalt Not Use Life Meters) carved into stone at their first planning session. If they could ever get past that, they could put together a great game. This is art over gameplay, instead of striking an equal balance of both.

Then there's God of War, which might as well be called Devil May Cry With Non-Copyrighted IP. This is a good demo, packing in a nice longish and impressive level, a behind the scenes featurette, and developer commentary played over a truncated run-through of the demo level.

So you're this angry Greek soldier guy, who cuts through enemies like crazy cakes. It's fast and brutal, with a nice assortment of moves. And to break up the slaughter bits, there's some miniboss fights and even a puzzle room. This is the game where you occasionally get stuck in a Hydra's mouth and you have to shove your way out of it by popping its jaw.

The miniboss fight (with a Hydra head) sold me on the game. Once you do enough regular damage to the head, then the game flashes a controller symbol at you... hit it and the game animates an insane killing move, then another and then another. It made for one wild end to the fight, as I grabbed this gigantic dragon head and whipped it from wall to wall. Yes, please. The puzzle room seemed like a pandering afterthought rather than a genuine part of the level... you come across a high platform and you need to kick a box over to it to continue up, while being attacked by archers up above. I don't know if the rest of the game's puzzle rooms will merge better, but this felt like the game was vainly trying to be more than what it should be.

I had to laugh when the creators in the behind the scenes movie started talking about how compelling the world of Poseidon and Ares and Medusa is. Dude, you guys paid exactly $0 to use those characters. No one had to research and/or create anything, aside from maybe renting "Clash of the Titans" once. I'm sure you all worked really hard designing the main character and the storyline... but that couldn't have been more than 5% of the work that goes into developing the cast of an entirely original game. You wanted a game with recognizable characters that cost nothing and you made it. So don't try to sell me on the idea that kids are going to embrace your gameworld... because they already did, about 2000 years ago.

The audio commentary bit was quite cool. I'd like to see more games do this. Although the guy that does all the talking is filled with self-loathing. He actually begins the commentary by saying how he doesn't like audio commentaries in video games, alluding that video games as an art form aren't worth the discussion and analysis you normally find in DVD commentaries. Son, if you're not passionate about your job, step down. He does get past the embarrassment he feels at having to blab about video games, and then he talks about the choices they made in designing the demo level, how the final boss fight works, his goals for the project, etc. And that was good stuff.

And what do we get on G4? Tonight I saw those two morons from Judgment Day squatting in a forest talking about Big Game Hunter Deer Killing Simulator Who Cares. That channel has already lowest common denominatored themselves right out of relevance.

Summary. Do not buy Getaway: Black Monday. Consider buying God of War. G4 is awful and is always good for an insulting dig at any time in any post.

Tonight's Law and Order: SVU rerun tackled the crime-caused-by-video-games issue. The fictional game used in the episode ("Intensity") was obviously a Grand Theft Auto riff, although it looked more like crap than expected. The crux of the episode was that the killers mimicked a crime found in the game, kicking a hooker to death.

Weirdly, they decided to make the hooker-kicking scene an easter egg, rather than just normal gameplay. But I suppose the virtual sandbox concept of GTA is difficult to explain to an audience with little experience in modern video games. If your chief frame of reference is something like NES Mario, where the game consists of a series of levels where you run from Point A to Point B, you probably have trouble imagining what kind of game would include being able to kick hookers.

You know, the whole GTA "killing a hooker for her cash" meme came up at work the other day. And actually, it was compounded by the suggestion that you can rape women in GTA. Where did this notion come from? There's no raping in GTA. None. There's the comical implication of sex, but no rape minigame or sub-mission or anything like that.

Yes, the game includes hookers, and, like all characters in the game, they can be killed... and they will often drop cash when they die. It's interesting that people want to connect the dots and create a storyline about that ability. To wit: you use a hooker's services, then you kill her and take that money back. As if money in the game is a zero-sum system. You can kill anyone in the game and get money, that's just the way the game works. Money is cheap. And you can't kill too many pedestrians before the cops start showing up.

San Andreas lets you complete a pimping mission that rewards you by having all future hookers pay you for the privilege. I wonder if that's a direct response to the usual anti-GTA refrain about tossing around prostitutes. "See, now you don't have to kill them for their money anymore!" How stupid that "killing a hooker for her cash" has become the popular opinion talking point about the GTA games.

The SVU episode ended up holding the killers responsible for their actions (Hooray!), although the verdict mainly hinged on a separate incident that proved they knew their actions were wrong in the first place and were not wholly influenced by an "addictive, violent video game." They blew apart a weak dopamine-based attack on gaming, and covered that unbalanced people can get bad ideas from any media - and that most people simply don't carry anything out. So the defense of video games was decent.

Where the gaming industry came off the worst was in the laissez faire attitude of the game developers and programmers, who were all written as slacky, unkempt Gen Xers. You could hear a million Bible Belters clucking their tongues in derision. UNTIL THE VERDICT, HAW.

Aside from the low quality faked game sequences, the best gag for gamers was when they hooked the killer up to a brainscan to test his dopamine levels while playing Intensity. And they show him using a GameCube controller! Not bloody likely.

Been a while, I know. The truth is, I got caught up in Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories and basically avoided LeafGreen for a time. As a general rule, I try to keep one active game per system - setting LeafGreen aside to play Kingdom Hearts was an anomaly, but it points to the lack of compelling content in LeafGreen. When I was deep in Sapphire, almost nothing could sway me from its grip (over 150 hours!) LeafGreen just sort of skates along in Sapphire's wake. In fact, I'm kind of steamrolling through LeafGreen now so I can get to Minish Cap.

Tri-Island recap. Lostette: Home. Islands' narrow-minded Kanto prejudice: eliminated. Pokemon PC storage system: Fixed. Me: Returned to Cinnabar.

Continuing on the continent's clockwise sweep, I swam north for a glorious return to Pallet Town. But I wasn't really interested in a homecoming; Pallet is a rural suburb of Viridian City, the true goal... for now the Gym is open.

After sabotaging his plans back in the Rocket Hideout, Giovanni goes back to his day job as a Gym Leader. I levelled him, and Blastoise's Surf did most of the work. We must have some kind of gentlemen's agreement, because I made no effort to tell the authorities that Viridian's Gym Leader is actually the leader of a notorious crime gang. I must have felt sorry for him since the battle was so one sided. The puzzle paths in his Gym are lame too.

After polishing Giovanni off and receiving my eight badge, I'm now equipped to head to Indigo Plateau for the ultimate championship challenge.

I guess this is intentional, but it sure seems inconvenient. The only way to Indigo Plateau and the Pokemon League headquarters is through a long empty forest path followed by a deep underground cave maze. The greenery section is devoid of conflict, but the cave - Victory Road - is the usual mess of wandering trainers and random battles. I did catch a wild Marowak and Sandshrew though.

There's more boulder-shoving inside Victory Road, and judging by the number of trainers apparantly lost inside the maze, I have to wonder why the League doesn't just bulldoze a tunnel straight through. I guess it keeps out the riff-raff. The notion must be solid, for both Johto and Hoenn have since adopted the big obnoxious cave for their own League building front yards.

Now is when I need to consider who will be on my winning team. The Blastoise and Gengar are a given. The Growlithe (evolve already!) and the Snorlax are likely. I may keep the Gyarados in for some easy EXP so I can push him to higher levels. My trusty Meowth is out, however. His role is that of sneakthief and cutpurse, not as a champion battler.

So who to bring in? One of the Legendary Birds seems obvious as they are all at level 50. The next closest fighters currently lounging in storage are the Marowak and Sandslash I just caught, both in their mid-40s. Like the Gyarados, I have a bunch of pokemon in the upper 30s waiting for a chance to shine: a Machamp, Persian, Weepinbell, Rapidash, Tentacruel and Magmar.

Given that I'm committing to a water-type (Blastoise), fire-type (Growlithe), ghost-type (Gengar), and the big normal-type staller Snorlax, it may be wise to throw in the grass-type Weepinbell instead of my Meowth... and then either stick with Gyarados for his dragon-type attacks or dump him for a total weenie who I want to evolve. Or forget about the weaker guys and fill out the roster with the Zapdos and Articuno... but it seems cheesy to rely on the Birds to carry me through the Championship since I've done nothing with them up to this point. We'll see how the battles go before I call on the Birds to bail me out. If this League runs like the previous Elite Four sequences in other games, I won't hit real trouble until halfway to two-thirds through.

Time: 41:26
Badges: 8
Pokedex: 89 (Seen: 137)
Party: Growlithe lv47, Blastoise lv54, Katamari (Meowth) lv39, Gengar lv59, Gyarados lv38, Snorlax lv49

The secret's out... I'm working on a Fatal Frame card game.

Disclaimer: Again, this is purely a fan thing... just something I do to kill time. It's not endorsed, supported, approved or requested by the good folks from Tecmo who created this super-awesome PlayStation2 series.

Just like I did with Red Dwarf, Mitchell, and my heretofore crowning achievement, TaleSpin, Fatal Frame: the Card Game will be freely available online in multiple PDF downloads until I get a call from a lawyer. I don't know if it's cathartic or what, but I seem to enjoy designing card games based on the media works I'm currently obsessing over. I have quite a few unfinished efforts sitting around my den, but Fatal Frame is the one that has made it to alpha mode... IE, workable ruleset and first drafts of Photoshopped card designs. Fatal Frame: the Card Game will be subtitled "Crimson Butterfly Edition" because I'm working solely with the second game in the series, Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly.

I've been asked many times why I concentrate on making card games out of established licensed properties, and the answer is awfully utilitarian. It's just relatively easy to find art resources for something that already exists. Sure, I could create a card game based on something original, but then I'd have to do all the artwork... and that takes time. Not that I wouldn't consider doing my own thing someday with an eye towards publishing it, but that's a difficult road to uncertain ends in a miserable market.

Back to Fatal Frame. The two PlayStation2 games in the series follow a common theme: reluctant heroine wanders into ancient haunted locales with only a spiritual camera for protection. The camera can exorcise the ghosts by taking pictures of them. While the heroine tries to find her way out of the mansion/village, she gradually learns of horrible and disturbing rituals that were once held there. And, of course, the ghosts are working to re-enact those days on her.

Turning a video game into a card game naturally comes with changes and concessions. For one thing, the atmosphere of a horror game is almost impossible to duplicate in card form. Third World's Testimony of Jacob Hollow is a good horror card game, but it's not scary... it's still just a card game. The immersion just isn't there. My Fatal Frame will have the same problem. I can use all the gory artwork I like; it's not going to be scary. My main effort towards adding to the atmosphere is in flavor text. Lots of flavor text. One of the problems of the modern card game is that the flavor text tends to be lame. I've talked about this before and the situation hasn't changed since then; most flavor text is used to lump in weak sarcastic jokes. I'm going to prove my point by randomly grabbing a card from Spycraft, last year's new game from AEG...

From one of the secret agent cards: "Oh, you wanted subtle. Yeah. I don't do subtle."

See, that character is tough, a smartass, does things his own way, a loose cannon. A raging cliche that I couldn't care less about. His flavor text is no different from 20 other guys in the deck. It adds nothing to the gameplay, and even takes a dump on the game's setting by cheesing it up. Magic has a history of lame flavor text; the example Mike and I always quote is Jaya Ballard, Task Mage, from the Ice Age set. Jaya was another character puffed up with action movie stupido quotes. Like "Yes, I think 'toast' is an accurate description" on the card Incinerate. She sucked.

Gah, off track again. Anyway, I'm using actual in-game text for the ghost cards. Plus some pretty lengthy stuff for cards that represent the game's many notes and files you find. I'm hoping that players can piece together the story - and at least, shades of it - just by paying attention and sorting through the flavor text. Because it's Crimson Butterfly's story that makes it scary, with the rituals and sacrifices and pain and such. It still creeps me out.

The camera is another important facet of the series. Duplicating that with cards is rough. I originally had a strange centering mechanic, where you would roll to see if your photo of the attacking ghost was centered, for maximum points. That got weird. We're down to a simple die roll now for fighting ghosts, but the camera asthetic survives via camera upgrades (film, etc) that help out your roll and a "photo album" where you store the ghost cards you have beaten.

Basically, players will each start the game with a camera as they enter All God's Village (the setting for FF2). The Village is made of 9 exterior location cards, all facedown. So the Village will be randomized each game for variety. The game's Houses will be on these cards, and if you want to enter them, then you pull cards off a separate interior location deck. As you walk through these locations, interior and exterior, you will attract ghosts. Most will be played on you by opponents, but you can play ghosts on yourself if you're feeling lucky. Ghost combat is done with a six-sided die, assisted by the camera upgrades you've collected. Some ghosts are worth points, but the big points come from finding Items (which can only be played at interior locations). Once you get 15 points, you can enter Kureha Shrine to fight one of three random Boss ghosts. Beat the Boss and you win the game.

I'm trying to stay as close to the source material as possible. But like I said, some things just have to be altered to make sense in a card game. I originally considered making it a two-on-two team game... to simulate Crimson Butterfly's focus on twins. But I decided I'd rather keep the format to the usual 2 to 4 players, plus I didn't want to hamstring the rules should I decide to make a Himuro Mansion Edition later on (based on the first FF game, which had no twins, although I suppose I could have treated Miku and Mafuyu as effectively "twins"). I'm actually not mentioning FF2 lead characters Mayu and Mio in the game much at all - although they feature prominently in the artwork panels - because I want the players to become their own explorers of All God's Village. What will probably happen is I will use their story to frame the rulebook. And yeah, I know FF2's final moments take place below Kurosawa House, not Kureha Shrine... but, well, it's complicated. Since Kurosawa House is the biggest House in the game, I wanted players to be able to explore it when they find it, just as Mio does.

Alpha stage means I have a complete, playable deck. I'm testing out the rules and card interactions, seeing what works and what doesn't. This game will be simpler than TaleSpin by design; for example, the first thing to go was the concept of playing cards on an opponent's turn. Any game that allows you to play cards on somebody else's turn invariably leads to timing problems. Not that "fast effects" are a bad thing, just that for this game, I'm trying to forge a game that avoids those issues.

Since I'm a sucker for good presentation, I have a nice red Asian-themed box to hold the cards (found at Pier One). I'm going to attach some bells to it so it jingles like Chitose! I also have a bunch of small photo frames, all black with red embroidery (found in the dollar bins at Target)... but I couldn't find a use for them. Maybe I'll print out some screenshots and hang them up somewhere. The design of the cards lifts some background elements from the FF2 website, lots of artwork found at my favorite FF fansite Beyond the Camera's Lens, and some screenshots from my own saved games.

To get the screenshots, I ran the PlayStation2 into Rhonda's iBook. Unfortunately, the video-in box I'm using is fairly old and crappy - it uses a slow USB connection so the screen refresh is delayed, making gameplay difficult. I need some shots of the Houses, but I've been too scared (and unskilled) to play my saves much.

I figure I'll have a "teaser" site up before too long. I won't get a complete site up for quite a while, not until the rules are solid and the card PDFs finalized. I think I had a TaleSpin teaser page up for almost two years before the final version launched. But Fatal Frame: the Card Game, Crimson Butterfly Edition is coming. Once I get into the Photoshop phase, that's a good sign that I'm serious enough about the project to finish it!

Where are the girls?

I'm speeding towards the end of the game's main storyline, and I've been getting ditched by my girlfriends all over the map. I've started dating all 6 of them... because you get some pretty nice rewards for doing so. The biggest deal being NOT having to lose all your weapons when you die or get caught by cops. That's worth it.

The problem with the girlfriends is that they hide a layer of complexity that the game doesn't discuss... which is inconsistent with the game's moderately annoying practice of throwing tips at you when you enter a new facet of gameplay. Well, maybe not "tips" so much as full definitions of what it means to be killed, to dance, to mod your car, etc... all covered on the first time you encounter said example.

With the girlfriends, I recall being told "You have a girlfriend. Stop by her place to take her out on dates!" Nothing about your personal sex appeal level (something the entire game barely talks about), nothing about what could possibly "turn off" your girlfriend's interest in you, and most importantly, nothing about when she will be home.

Because, somehow, some way, you can screw this up. If the girl likes guys with a high fat level, she won't go out with you. And you won't be told this, you'll just never ever see her mission point spawn. It works like this: you initiate the relationship when your attributes match her criteria, but if your attributes change, she just disappears. Presumably once you bring your fat level up (or whatever), her mission point will return... but then there's another factor: her schedule. Some girls are only around from midnight to noon, or 14:00 to 18:00... and you're never told this. You just have to drive by and visually check for a mission entry point. Stupidly, the girlfriend locations are always on the map, regardless of whether or not the girl is actually home. It would be smarter if the cute little map hearts popped up only when a girl was available, so you could see the heart and then hightail it over to San Fierro to pick up Katie before she leaves for work.

Now, this is all fine (semi-fine) as optional bonus missions. If you can manage to dope out the girl's wants and needs, you get a cool extra... unlocked car, hidden clothes, and the weapon junk mentioned above. Then I would say it is worth the hassle of figuring things out on your own. However, one of the girls (Millie up in Prickle Pine) is required dating to complete the Las Venturas heist missions. Now the struggle to date correctly is at odds with finishing the heist, and I'm annoyed.

So off to the FAQs. This game generates FAQs like diarrhea. Any yahoo can talk about this game with imagined authority. As such, I've found several FAQs that list two different times for Millie's availability. FAQs, in their purest form, should be written by anal-retentive gamers who have played the game obsessively, tracking every location, noting every power-up, listing every magic spell effect, copying every dialogue. Unfortunately, FAQ-writing has degraded into an avenue for minor celebrity status, so most just copy info from strategy guides or from each other... all rushing to be the first goof to get their printed word up on GameFAQs.com.

I ask you, how does the FAQ writer determine the schedule for when, say, Michelle is available for dates? They ought to park their asses outside her house and stalk the mission point. Instead, they copy/paste from some other source. And in this case, there must be multiple sources. I only found one guy who went out on a limb and said the strategy guide was wrong and he found Millie's date point available at noon.

And nobody seems to know exactly why a girlfriend would disappear, even when you're meeting her individual requirements. But I can't fault them for that; that's back end programming that Rockstar ought to have been more clear about.

Going through the six girls in the game, the only one I've successfully dated to 100% is #1, Denise. And that's only because she's nearly always available and has no attribute necessities. Helena (in Blueberry) requires low muscle and high sex appeal... getting the low muscle is relatively easy, but I only just recently connected sex appeal with flashy cars, so I need to get back to her again soon. I have not seen Michelle (San Fierro) since first contact back at the driving school. I've tried to meet her requirements - - but her mission point has never appeared for me. Not once. Katie (San Fierro) actually was home a couple times, but I took her to a restaurant she didn't like and the date grenaded. Now she's not around, and I don't know if we broke up or what. Barbara (El Quebrados) has just started with me, and I have not been back for a second date yet. Millie (Prickle Pine) is the real problem: I need her for a mission and she's never around.

So did the missing ladies dump me because I wasn't quick enough to call them? All six hearts are still on my map, so I should be considered "dating" all six of them, right? Mike did some experimentation: he flat-out assassinated his Denise with a shotgun, and her heart disappeared. Trust me, I've treated my girls like a perfect gentleman. Comparatively. When I could find them.

Can you stakeout a girl's house and watch for the mission light to pop up? I'm inclined to think you can't, because I have sat outside for days with no luck (usually listening to WCTR.) Even with Millie, who has no requirements. So maybe you need to be away from the house, then drive to it during the designated availability hours? For Millie, at least, this shouldn't even be a concern. She should be there at noon and ready to go, so I can continue the heist mission sequence.