Also, for the first time ever, Al will be participating in the infamous 24 Marathons which have disrupted podcasts in the past, so 143 will be on hold! Sorry guys, but the call of BBQ and Jack Bauer are just too much to resist.

Now, Advance Wars: Days of Ruin. It's not that I ever disliked the game; it's simply that I was a little disappointed in the lack of changes. I ended up being wrong, of course, about the CO powers though: I initially thought that they simply weren't present, but I finally reached a mission in which I was able to use a CO power. The power I used was far less game-changing than those in the past, and I don't know whether it's simply due to the CO I used or because that's how the game is now balanced, but from Ryan Davis' review on That Other Site, it seems to be the latter. I suppose it's better for the sake of game balance, but I always got a kick out of being able to get out of a REALLY tight spot by unleashing the fury of a Dual Strike.

Nevertheless, the subtle changes and unit additions (and subtractions, though I've not yet determined what's missing since I'm not even halfway through the game) do make for a noticeably different experience when you dig deep. I like the new anti-tank unit quite a bit. It's a ranged attacker, so it can't move-then-attack, but its range also covers the space immediately in front of it so it can still counter-attack when approached by a tank. (Hence, anti-tank. Dur?) The Flare unit is a godsend for those who hate Fog of War, though it's a little useless on maps without FOW; it CAN attack, but it's not entirely powerful. There are great additions in the Carrier-Seaplane combo, where a Carrier can roam the seas and then produce a seaplane that is very useful against sea and ground units. I can't remember whether or not it's weak against its fellow air units, but it's expensive (it costs money to build the carrier and THEN build the seaplane) so I can't imagine that it's supremely vulnerable to anything. So while at first I was a little bummed, now there seems to be much more of an expanded roster than when the NeoTank was the ONLY new unit, way back in the GBA days.

I like the ranking system (whenever a unit destroys another, it goes up in rank which increases its potency), as it forces me to take more care of my units. I also like the area-of-effect that a CO-occupied unit has. Similar to a hero unit in many RTS's, a unit that's carrying a CO buffs units around it. That unit is also the one that executes a CO power, though, so if you wanted to use that unit to bulldoze a hole through enemies, you'll have to consider postponing usage of the CO power or wasting an active turn with that unit. It's a nice balance, and I guess that's mostly what this game is: more and more balance.

I've started skipping the dialogue and story though. There's just too much ham-fisting and unnecessary reading. At least it's not super zippy chipper sugar rush...

...but is fake emo really worse?

Whew! Many hecticness over the last few weeks. The podcast is not dead, and we're recording this Saturday, which means throw your questions and comments over to mailbag AT trigames DOT net. Even though we haven't recorded a traditional episode in a while, we've christened Pete's hour-plus-long trilobyte as Episode 141 because there's enough in there to qualify as a full episode. The RSS is updated all nice and smooooove, but if there are any issues, please let me know. (Pete says he was having trouble with it before.)

Al's wedding was a very nice gathering on the side of the beach at the Rio Montego Bay. The rest of the trip was quite a lot of fun, as well. We all went on a zip-line tour but spent most of the time relaxing on the beach and enjoying free beverages of the "hard" kind. Never before have I spent that much time just lying down on a beach chair and getting some color to even out my horrendous t-shirt and sock tans. There were also some random late-night hijinx after those beverages started to take effect. I'll sum it all up with these pictures (our condition worsened from the first picture to the second picture in, I think, the span of an hour):

Don't ask me what we were doing in the second picture. Maybe he thought I had some electric charge to my skin, a la Blanka, and wanted to try it out. I don't know, I'm not a doctor.

But before we went to Jamaica, we caught up with Alex Navarro at the Village Pourhouse in New York City, where he and other Harmonix and MTV heads (with a cameo from Alex Rigopulos!) were showing off a preview build of The Beatles: Rock Band. Plenty of off-pitch harmonizing, Beatle-lovin' and open-bar drinking to be had, and Al finally met the voice behind the special guest of Trigames.NET Podcast Episode 47:

I hadn't shaved in a week. Still can't match the Navarro beard.

In the meantime I picked up Street Fighter IV for Windows via STEAM, and boy am I enjoying it. I suck at it completely but I'm definitely getting a kick out of learning the ins and outs of the Focus attack system, with the three levels of Focus, EX canceling, and the nasty stuff you can use to punish fools when you hit them with a fully charged attack (Zangief says hi). You're probably laughing at the fact that I got it for Windows, but it was cheaper than the console versions, I don't go online with my PS3 due to its physical location in the house, and the gamepad I have for my PC has a better d-pad than both the 360 and PS3 controllers. I also plan on trying out my X-Arcade joystick on it, something I *can't* do on those consoles (yet).

I also started a bit of Advance Wars: Days of Ruin, and I'm really sick of all the dialog that it throws at me. I would just skip it but sometimes I feel guilty for doing so. I don't know why. Thus far, I'm about 8 missions in and there are very few, minor differences between this game and those of old. I didn't bother reading the instruction manual; I figure I'll run into gameplay enhancements as I see them. But thus far, it really just seems like more of the same old same old. A new unit here, new zoning and building capabilities there. That means it's still a lot of fun, but it also means that Advance Wars: Dual Strike has been the only one out of the series to show any huge differences in gameplay thus far. Of course, I'll wait until I play a lot more to actually make a judgment.

I came home with The Conduit today, and after spamming a bunch of Gathering missions in Monster Hunter Freedom Unite, I decided to give this much bally-hooed Wii first-person shooter a whirl. Quick, bulleted impressions:

+ Great control options. This is pretty much a known quantity going in, what with all the previews talking about High Voltage Software's dedication to customization. I like this because I always tweak my settings on PC first-person shooters just the way I like it, and I like being able to do it here. Some people say, "Shouldn't they just get it right?" No, getting it right is allowing me to tweak it. The way I see it, for a first-person shooter, there is no "right" set of settings. Not allowing us to tweak is "getting it wrong" every which way you look at it.

- The framerate, while mostly consistent so far, is nowhere near as silky smooth as that of Metroid Prime 3 or Medal of Honor: Heroes 2. This goes a long way in making shooting with the Wii-mote feel good. In terms of responsiveness, it's at about the same sensitivity as Call of Duty 3 on Wii, which wasn't bad, but wasn't entirely great either. A 60 frames-per-second framerate would have been much appreciated.

+ On the flip-side, it's easy to see why the framerate had to be "locked" at 30. The enemy models, while not entirely varied, have great lighting and detail to them. You're not going to mistake this for an Xbox 360 game after you stare at it for a few seconds, but it's very, very high quality and at first you might do a double take. It's certainly a level of detail we've not seen on Wii before. Faux depth-of-field blur while reloading is cool, too. Some environment textures are nice, too.

- However, much of the environment seems flat. It doesn't help that the jaggies come out to play. Oh how I wish we had some sort of anti-aliasing. The environments just aren't entirely interesting yet, either. I'm on the third "level" so to speak and I haven't seen anything exciting.

+ Lots of fun, cathartic run-and-gun action.

- But as a result, lots of "killroom -- clear a space out, go to next" or "corridor shooter -- let's play whack-a-mole with soldiers popping out of doorways and from under cover" gameplay. Oh, and don't forget the exploding fuel tanks :P It depends on what you're looking for, but if it's the old-school linear heart-racing type of shooting you want, it's very hard to top Half Life 2.

+ Then again, Half Life 2 isn't on Wii, and perhaps this is The Conduit's saving grace: If you only own a Wii or just badly want to shoot stuff with the Wii-mote, this definitely beats dual analog control (but then again, you know how I feel about dual analog...blech) and is certainly a fine option...

- ...as long as you haven't been spoiled by Medal of Honor: Heroes 2 or Metroid Prime 3's smooth control.

Quick preview evaluation would be one thumb up, but not two.