The very first page of our Prince of Persia 3 comic is now online. This is a really cool project. Ubisoft is allowing us to sort of investigate the relationship between the Prince and the Dark Prince. It’s an eight page story that examines what the internal dialogue between the two characters might be like. If you’ve been following the game at all you know that the Prince actually transforms into the Dark Prince. Our story essentially illustrates that process and suggests what might be going on inside the prince’s head. Tycho obviously is writing this one. I’m handling the pencils and the inks. My stuff is then being masterfully colored by Joe Pekar. I think this is some of our best stuff, hopefully you guys will dig it.
Those of you who are lucky enough to find an Xbox 360 here in a couple days will get a cool surprise. You will be able to download Penny Arcade skins and avatars to customize your Xbox Live experience. These items will be available via the new marketplace feature in Live.
I’m playing a few different games right now and I just wanted to drop some quick impressions.
Shining Force Neo – A great action RPG with one of the worst stories I’ve ever been forced to skip through. Not only is it bad but it’s delivered through terrible voice acting and some really half assed cut scene art. If you can stomach the ridiculously long and boring intro there’s some good gaming to be had in there.
Lord of the Rings Tactics – Christ this game is hard.
Karaoke Revolution Party – This game got some pretty poor reviews but those people don’t know what the fuck they are talking about. It’s easily the best of the series. They’ve added a very robust set of character creation tools. They’ve got a really good selection of songs for all kinds of players. In my opinion it feels pretty heavily weighted towards 80’s rock which for this 28 year old is awesome. They’ve also included a few mini games which in a party environment are a real treat. If you are a fan of the series then you’re going to love KRP. Don’t pay any attention to the bullshit reviews out there.
I’m looking forward to picking up Magna Carta tomorrow. I’ve heard a few different people mention Shadow Hearts when discussing Magna Carta and that has me excited. I’ve been hungry for a more traditional RPG experience lately and since Square seems unwilling to deliver it I’m forced to look elsewhere.
This week Penny Arcade is turning seven years old. We decided to celebrate by alienating our readers with a new website design. I’m kidding, we’ve actually had this design in the works for just over a year. Obviously we’re big fans of the look, I especially like how PAX, Child’s Play and PA all have a unified design now. Penny Arcade has something like four million readers though, and there’s no way we could ever come up with a site that would appeal to everyone. If you don’t like it I apologize, hopefully it will grow on you and you’ll be sending me hate mail in another three years when we change it.
Along with the slick new visuals the guts of the site also got a huge upgrade. Penny Arcade right now represents one of the largest implementations of "rails" on the intertron. I went and looked at a website about rails and then I got a headache. From what I gathered it’s either some kind of cutting edge programming language, or a way to liquefy a man’s brain inside his skull. I'm told that it means the site looks better and loads faster regardless of whatever hippy web browser you decide to use. Fuck M$!
For me, it feels like I was given the keys to a brand new hot rod. I’d like to thank Erik (Alphamonkey), Sean (Chittenden) from GigAve.com and Kiko for doing such an incredible job on the new site.
-Gabe out
