Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this column are those of the participants and the moderator, and do not necessarily reflect those of the GIA. There is coarse language and potentially offensive material afoot. My human tied me in a bag and throwed me in the water. Don't say we didn't warn you.

Last year was the Summer of Adventure, or SoA. This year is the Summer of Sitting Around Waiting For Metal Gear And The Gamecube To Come Out, or SoSAWFMGATGTCO. Next year I may learn to play mumblety-peg.

I dunno, maybe Tycho and Gabe are right, and games really are getting more boring.

Onward.

Most honorable "'sup"-saying sir, this unworthy one must respectfully disagree. Good games seem to move in surges - maybe it's not cyclical, but there's definitely some grouping going on. When the SNES came out, games were few but what there was was gold: the first four titles I played through were Mario World, Actraiser, Populous and Final Fantasy II, and a better opening run I may never see again. When I first got the PSX, there wasn't much out for it, and now there's not much out for it, but last year we had a blitz of great titles from Square and others... I'm still not caught up. It's not that there's not crap coming out all the time as well, but there are plenty of times where there's so much good stuff coming out the that the crap seems... less crappy. Or something.

I could make the same argument I made above, but I'm too mellowed out by your dude-speak to make a big argument. And that is also good. Yeah. Or something.

I thought Fritz himself needed to answer this one, but I missed getting it to him by press time. However, I was advised by the rest of the staff to mock you for your overly familiar tone, so...

Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries!

Consider yourself mocked.

I think Billy Graham recommending Xenogears would have been a sign of the apocalypse. That aside, the fact that some users praised the game while the writer trashed it is exactly what made the whole thing so interesting for me: everybody saw what they wanted to see out of the game. I'm not saying that any of the reviews on that site or wrong, but they're really different from my personal take on things, and they're moderately well argued, and I find that fascinating. As for the Titanic review...

There's two ways I can take this: jokingly, and seriously. Jokingly, sure; ha ha, what a lame movie, Celine Dion sucks, etc. If we're talking actual film quality, then of course I agree: I've always said LA Confidential got robbed by Titanic, and while I'm not a huge SPR fan, anybody should be able to see that it's a far, far better and more serious film.

But if we're actually talking morality, I can't agree. Let's take the film review on face value for a second: Rose is a slut and a thief, Jack's a low class wastrel, and Rose's fiance is a decent guy who's well within his rights during his violent outbursts, just another example of the horrid, horrid prejudice against rich white males. (Ok, I can't take that last part seriously, but let's pretend anyway.) On the other hand we have Saving Private Ryan, a movie which features completely average, regular American guys pushed into insanely trying circumstances. Germans are fragged, shot, executed, and barbecued, although to their credit, they attempt to do much the same to our guys. I'm not much for morals or ethics, but I do think it's fair to say the following: are the actions in SPR necessary? Yes, absolutely. Are they moral? No. That being the case, I can't seriously suggest that pre-marital sex and grand-grand-grand theft is worse than the wholesale slaughter of enemy soldiers, no matter what the context.

I really have no idea why I felt compelled to argue that point. Ah well, flame away.

Ok, so what we have here is a mediocre-looking website with an incredibly prime domain name, founded by a bunch of guys who will doubtless argue that they were just huge Zelda fans in their youth. My bet is, it's just a front business to hang on to the domain name while Nintendo makes its mind up to buy it off of them, but perhaps they could also be contemplating some bizarre form of suicide-by-litigation. Who knows?

Closing Comments:

Fares' letter brings up an interesting question: what do you want from reviews, both from the GIA and from the many-faceted media in general? What standpoint do you want them written from, what criteria do you want them to cover, and what shortcomings do you see in the existing review method? I'll be back tomorrow, until then, sharpen your quills on that one.

-Chris Jones, as long as their soda cans are red, white, and blue ones