God of War 2, Lost Planet, Neverwinter Nights 2, Gamertag Radio!

No, we don't have the demo of God of War 2 yet; hell we just stole the cover art from (the big man himself) Cory Barlog's blog. The men and women at SCEA have been literally killing themselves over making this game perfect for its launch. Literally. I think people might have actually DIED. Grandma envisions Cory three different ways whenever we talk about game development:

1. He's the strong leader type; bringing the army of artists, programmers and testers gifts of coffee and booze in a sly attempt to assess what they're doing and coordinate the effort.

2. He's the slave-driver, cracking his whip upon the bleeding backs of "the wretched", compelling them to work faster without deviating from his empirical vision lest they be punished in ways that better capture the mythological theme of the piece.

3. He's hiding under his desk weeping; rocking back and forth muttering something like the word "Kratooooos" while his coworkers desperately try to get him to drink liquids.

Who can be sure, really... All I know is that Grandma is looking forward to March.

And who isn't?! We have what she played at E3 to go by to be sure, and the press junket last May where Cory and David talked about what GoW2 was to be, but now we need something new to drive our highly rational, anticipatory high.

So all we have is the cover art of the demo. That's alright, we can work with just about anything, really. Let's take a closer look:

So, the first thing that catches your eye is this big scary statue thing with glowing blue shit coming out of its eyeballs. Look at that thing. That thing is pissed. It has its hair styled in a messy sort of way rather than the braided, straight look of the Archaic period, so we're guessing probably more Late Classical or Roman Hellenistic. This may suggest Kratos is kind of an art snob. And who could blame him! Braiding makes sense; gods can braid each other's hair in their off time, but to suggest there is some kind of immortal cosmetic coppersmith that could fashion a headband for a god is absurd. That thing NEEDS a Kratos style ass-whoopin'.

Next up you see Kratos looking like he's having a bit of a bad day. He's got that German pieta Jesus look to him that just says "This fucking HURTS, god DAMMIT!!", but that wouldn't be Kratos. He's definitely more of a Laocoön figure this time around, but it's going to take more than a few snakes to take him down, and certainly more than a haphazardly manicured giant hand of Athenian marble, we'd guess.

Kratos' look of pain can only mean one thing, then. This game is going to be fucking HARD. God Mode? Forget about it. Cory says welcome to TITAN mode.

Hmmmmm..... I wonder what the rating is going to be! Picture Grandma scratching her chin in a very conspicuous, dramatic way looking toward the ceiling as though the concentration on this thought is so deep it forces her to divert her attention to the somewhat less distracting sky.

I just WONDER what the ESRB is going to rate this game! It's so not obvious, I just may lose sleep thinking about it.

Anyway, if you haven't already read Cory's history of making this game, from the moment he discovered he was to direct it, all the way to the beta testing and beyond, check out his blog. "He's one of the good ones" as Grandma says.

The Final Fantasy XII/Okami overlapping tale has repeated itself once again, this time with Lost Planet for the XBox 360 slowly taking over Zelda: Twilight Princess on the GameCube. Truth is, Grandma may have spent too much time on the mini-games in ZTP, so it's taking her longer than most. We'll update as soon as she gives her final thoughts on the game. Lost Planet so far is very.... Capcom. You'd know it was a Capcom game even if you never saw the opening logo. It's fantastic. But more on that later!

On the 10th, Godfree over at Gamertag Radio published their interview with Grandma and I for their podcast. You can find the whole thing right here. They silenced our usual slew of vulgarity, so the podcast is SFW for all you employed readers. Grandma talks about the next-gen console war among other things, and I ramble on about god-knows-what. It's worth a listen to get addicted to their podcast, which has always been cool.

Speaking of things that are absolutely cool beyond measure:


Annie, who incidentally is one of Grandma's first friends from all this, sent Grandma an early Birthday present. As I think I've mentioned before E3, she works at Obsidian entertainment now. She thought it'd be groovy to send Grandma a copy of their masterpiece, Neverwinter Nights 2. She also thought it'd be groovy if she got the whole dev team to sign the box.

How fucking groovy is THAT?! THAT'S AWESOME!

So that does it, I'm getting Grandma into PC games. She's reluctant, goddammit. She loves her consoles and will never abandon them. EVER. So I'd like to get her to play some PC games as well, starting with this PC game right here. She's played a few in the past, but she's convinced she's the Alan Grant of computer destruction. Besides! If I can convince her of the virtues of PC gaming, it will be the one thing for which I can take credit in her gaming history. Everything else that she's liked, she found on her own. Now I get to teach her something. It's kind of exciting actually! It's my new project. I'll document her progress here.

Until then, you can guess who's playing it. It's a lot like KOTOR! (Obsidian made KOTOR II so it makes sense now that I think about it.) I like.

Grandma took a trip down to Columbus yesterday to appear on "Finer with Age", a show developed by the Ohio Department of Aging and it was ..quite the adventure! (All went well, don't worry.) We'll have more on that soon. We have some more things lined up as well and if I can get my ass in gear I'll be able to relocate the site to a more dependable server so we can post more often; something that will suit our "upcoming plans." More videos coming, by the way!

Game on!