Launch days are always filled with crappy sports rehashes and proof-of-concept titles like Fantavision. The early games are all about the graphics push. Smuggler's Run was hyped as being both beautiful and expansive, and even though I generally avoid car games, it sounded good enough to me.

And in the year 2000, it was a revelation. First, it looked great. You could see all sorts of little details on the cars... the engine rumbling under a mangled hood, the smoke pouring from a burnout. And second, you could go anywhere. You didn't have to stay on one boring circular track! The blinders were finally off; I could have fun zipping around a world in whatever stupid, mud-spraying, car-tipping way I liked. If you could summarize the PS2 generation in one word, that word would be exploration.

We have a huge problem with WalMart. The ugliest people in America regularly shop at WalMart and that's a group we would prefer to avoid. We are always out shopping (mostly at Target and Toys R Us) and we never see the kind of filthy scum out 'n' about that we always always always see on the off chance we need to venture inside a WalMart. Why is this? Is it really the cheap prices? Is it the No Questions Asked return policy?

We have a nearby super mega WalMart, the kind with a grocery store, McDonald's, photo center, and a nail salon inside. It was probably the biggest WalMart in America (for a month) when it was built.

I liked it.

I know that it is super trendy to hate it. Dial B for Blog - the same comics weblog that spent an insensitive week gushing over Christian messages in comics, and pathetically attempted to convince readers that the first Silver Surfer/Galactus appearance in Fantastic Four was a Jesus story - went absolutely bonkers over Infinite Crisis #3. (And I grabbed some of Dial B's scans for my use, bleah.) Like, f-bombs everywhere bonkers. And when I pointed out on the comments boards the irony that, not one week earlier, Dial B was all sugary-sweet for the Savior, I was admonished for assuming that every story with Christ guest-starring in it was a Christ-is-LORD story. Sigh.

So here's the major plot points and what I thought.

Happened to notice some new Justice League figure packaging at Target last weekend. It's orange and has the new DC logo, so it caught my eye. But what stopped me cold was the Superman figure...

You remember this game for exactly one reason: it came with a demo of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. As I'm sure was the case with most people, I played that demo more than I played Z.O.E.

Not that it was a terrible game - I recall lots of explosions - just a stupidly short one. I was also bitterly let down by the cliffhanger ending, which was either intended to spark a sequel or to get me to buy whatever anime/manga that the Z.O.E. franchise came from/vanished into. Not something I'd play today, just because the flashy graphics have been surpassed and there wasn't enough level or enemy variety.

I bought this for the MGS2 demo. So did you. And that's a game I actually would play today.

Memory Score: really, there was a game included with that demo?

Although I enjoy seeing Blanca designs from around the world, I'm considering turning her off (you can do so with the phone in your bedroom.) I have a sinking suspicion that her appearance in your town takes the place of any other given daily random wanderers... so every day that I get a Blanca means another day that I don't get Wendell or Shrunk or Pascal, etc. I hope I'm wrong about this. Blanca is nice and all, but I don't need her interrupting my ability to get all the rare Saharah items.

So, as promised, here's the FIVE Blanca heads I've seen in a little over one week.

That's one of the ugliest things I've ever seen.

There's a Nintendo survey going around that gauges opinion on the concept of a virtual console... the fancy name for the Nintendo Revolution's downloadable catalog of games from the NES, SNES and N64. The survey comes complete with some mocked-up images that show how such a service might work. And they're incredibly, amateurishly ugly. Had I three wishes, I would consider using one to go back in time to kill whoever it was who invented the font "Impact."

Today we went to Boyds Bear Country in nearby Gettysburg. There are swirling rumors that BBC isn't performing financially, so we wanted to get Clark there before the pink slips fly.

Rising up out of fields that probably still hold the blood and bone of Civil War soldiers, Boyds Bear Country is a classic monument to unchecked consumerism in the grand American style.

I think I may have enjoyed Red Dead Revolver more. I just went back and perused my review of Red Dead Revolver (PS2) and I had a surprising amount of cheer for it. Gun, in direct comparison as Wild West games, is far more bland... an amnesiac drifter of an experience while RDR is focused and stylized.

This revelation surprises me because Gun should have been the better experience. Open environments, GTA-style mission-based gameplay, slicker graphics. Instead, the forgotten, sorta low-rent Red Dead Revolver - even as a linear, level-based adventure with a short game clock - stands out as doing more with less, rather than doing less with more.

Gun follows the tale of Colton White, who is frog-marched through plot points like a perp on trial. There's a dev quote (I think it came from an interview in Nintendo Power) where somebody says that they were under orders to keep all the cutscenes under two minutes. And they talked about this like it was a huge feature, because Gamers Everywhere (tm) always smack buttons to skip in-game movies.

My first PS2 happy mascot platformer (if you don't count Cookie and Cream.) I was a big fan of the first Klonoa game on the PS1... and both of these titles still pop up on Overlooked Gems lists whenever a magazine editor has a page to fill. So it's become a bit of a cliche to even mention the Klonoa series, although it's nowhere near the lip service that follows another game on today's entry.

The thing about the Klonoa games - and I'm just talking the core 2.5D titles, not the GBA games or that Klonoa Volleyball stuff - is that they are really, really good. The worlds are bright and impressive, the bosses measure up to anything found in Mario64 or Sonic Adventure, the timed puzzles require thought and skill.

So why don't you see much of Klonoa? Despite his own dedication to quality, he's just another unlicensed platformer buried in an avalanche of platformers, licensed and unlicensed. It's a good thing they got this game out the door so fast in the PS2 lifecycle, because within another year he would have been personally choked to death by SpongeBob, Crash Bandicoot, and Ty the Tasmanian Tiger.

Memory Score: it goes without saying that he's much more popular in Japan

We had Tony and Josh over last night for some general gaming. Tony brought over Smackdown/RAW for PS2 and we followed that up with some GameCube WarioWare.

We're in the middle of an epic Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures level when we hear a bang from outside. Now, I have these guys parking along the street, so I peek out to see if something terrible and stupid happened to one of their cars. I can see both of the vehicles and there are no obvious signs of a recent accident... stationary headlights, shiny glass fragments, people standing around scratching their heads. None of that. So we make some repo man jokes and get back to Four Swords. This is about 11:30pm.

Adamsvil's Open Gate Nights continue to be a rousing success. Tonight, there must have been a waiting list to get in, because for the first hour, as soon as somebody left, somebody else walked in. I hope that everybody who has tried to get in has found an open slot. I have a lot of friend codes from players who I haven't seen in town yet, so I hope you just haven't been playing at 8pm EST and not that you saw the maxxed population and gave up. Let me know if you've repeatedly tried and failed!

Most of you must be East Coasters, because it's almost 11pm now, and I'm standing all by myself in Adamsvil amidst a sea of free items to touch.

When I saw Apple's new Intel chip commercial, my first thought was that it was made solely for Mac trade shows and would never actually see air. I mean, as a Mac user, I got it. I giggled on the "dull little boxes, dull little tasks" line. But does the non-Mac user - the non-tech head - understand it?

It's a very nice spot. I love the restrained, hopeful looks on the technicians' faces. Keifer Sutherland is just as distinctive, commanding and measured as Jeff Goldblum was in his VO work.

But I don't think it sells the Mac very well, and I certainly don't know who is the target audience. I've known about Mac switching to Intel chips for a while now, and I still have no idea what that really means.

Fresh from the fertile mind of Valsu of Trinsic... the upside down Blanca! I actually didn't get this until I hit the zoom-in; before that I thought it was just another dashed-off Blanca head. Cute idea; bland execution.

The PS1 GTA series was pretty hit or miss in the minds of critics before October 2001. I considered myself a fan... enough to have actually bought the London 1969 expansion disk. So I was already interested by the time those first few screenshots and details started hitting the press. We simply had no idea how huge this game was going to be.

When I played the MGS2 demo back in ZOE, that was the first time I thought "This is what a next-gen game looks like." When I played GTA3 for the first time, I thought "This is what a next-gen plays like."

It really was astonishing. The size of the world, the open-ended mission structure, the sidequests and Hidden Packages, the voice cast, the mix of crazy driving and hand-to-hand action, the radio stations. The sense of being in a living world.

Sure, some will see nothing more than a reprehensible crime simulator, with cop-killing and hookers and drugs and gangsters. But with a moral decay standard that ranges from MTV to HBO, it just doesn't strike me as the kind of thing to worry about. Society at large is fine with Grand Theft Auto.

GTA has earned every bit of praise, and very little of those accolades are overly concerned with content. This is a damn fine game, and a franchise that only got better.

Memory Score: I know more about Liberty City than I do about my own hometown

A much better start than issue three's Atlantis Attacked! motif. Last issue, with the Atlantis and Themyscira bits, reminded me of a Funniest Home Videos interview I read in TV Guide back when I was, like, 15 and considered TV Guide something I ought to read each week. One of the folks who held the job of choosing what videos make air said that they receive a lot of tapes with stuff that is Only Funny To The Relatives Of The People In The Video. There was a much more interesting acronym, but I don't remember what it was. Well, seeing Atlantis smooshed and Themyscira erased are Much More Meaningful If You're Already A Fan.

BUT... seeing the Society dump Chemo onto Bludhaven (killing millions, by Nightwing's count) was more powerful to me than Atlantis and Themyscira combined. And I don't read Nightwing's book.

This entry is dedicated to Snake, pictured at right. I always wanted him in my GameCube town but never saw him. He did briefly live in my DS town, and I was grateful for the short time we spent together. Had I bothered to visit him every day, maybe I would have seen him packing and urged him not to move. But I did not, and so now there is a sheep living where Snake's dojo once stood.

An Urban Dead update: I've only been checking in sporadically as of late, because I have well over 1000 XP and nothing interesting to spend them on. I've pretty much been waiting for the game to add in some new features (like the recent NecroTech upgrade). So I've been just hanging out in the Calvert Mall, leaving occasionally to stab at some zombies.

This week, I noticed some chatter about a big zombie incursion, an organized mob picking its way from mall to mall... because malls are typically huge human strongholds. Now, I've heard this for months; nearly every week somebody in the room would run in all panicked about the giant zombie attack that was coming within a day or two. But this time, it wasn't just crying wolf...

Yes, I do think the new DS looks great. I'm already hoping for a small list of color choices.

I enjoyed the original PS1 Medal of Honor. It wasn't a franchise worth obsessing over, but I respected the dramatic vibe and it was a functional-enough FPS. Frontline continued that tradition of acceptably so-so gameplay, but with a huge graphics upgrade.

The thing I remember most about this game isn't the show-stopping D-Day opener, but the weird flayed skin thing you could do to NPCs. If you got a grenade to go off near somebody without killing him, the game would peel back the skin around his mouth and leave a grinning rictus of the kind that early Robert Jordan always went on about. And remember, they'd still be alive, talking to you, with this hideous death metal album cover jawline. Creepy. And since the characters in this game always crooked their heads to stare at you during live cutscenes, it could get really creepy.

I don't think I ever finished this one. I think I just got tired of it. And seeing how the MoH series petered out, I don't know if it was a good series gone lame, or if it was always mediocre and we just never noticed.

Memory Score: good night, Medal of Honor, and all the sequels you see