Jeff Gerstmann is Still Alive

Spent all my credit card reward points (and about another $900 in cash) and picked up a new video camera. It’ll probably mostly get used at work, for instances where we need a smaller camera that an idiot like myself can use. I shot a bunch of stuff at Wrestlemania with it, just to sort of break it in. It’s a Sony HDR-XR520V and so far, it seems great. Definitely better than the $130 Polaroid video cameras I bought off Woot, but those cameras have now become, like, disposable. Maybe we’ll strap them to skateboards and roll them down a hill or something.

So, uh, since the people who might still be RSS’ing this blog are probably the only people who would care… probably going to shoot some sort of “points related” video with that camera in the near future and post it over on this giantbomb.com web site. You may have heard of it. It’s about video games and hamburgers and nudity and S-rank.

I don’t know if it’ll become a regular thing, because editorially, that entire site is like one big points report sort of thing for us. We’re a group of guys, saying what we mean about video games and having fun while doing so. Recording a video designed to be “frank discussion” becomes a little redundant at that point. But let’s see how it goes. If I can get some free time at home this week, I’ll try to at least get it recorded.

Welp, the bank that I owe a few hundred grand to for this house failed today. You know what that means… FREE HOUSE!

AW YEAH! Wait, are you saying it doesn’t mean that they’ll all just go away? And that I’ll probably have to keep paying money to the company that’s taking control of the old bank? Crap.

My receiver woes are at an end, and I’ve gone Onkyo. It’s the TX-SR606, brushed aluminum to be exact. It was an extra six bucks to get a shiny one, obviously totes worth it. Setting it up was crazy easy, and being able to go HDMI end-to-end eliminates a lot of unnecessary steps from the process. Between the new receiver and some new front speakers, games sound crazy. Totally hearing things I’ve never heard before, like more nuanced engine noises in Burnout Paradise. It’s pretty cool and feels like it’s worth the investment.

The only problem with all this is that it sets off a chain reaction of spending. I have a set of new front L/R speakers from Aperion Audio, and I have a new subwoofer on the way, as well. I think that by the end of all this, I’ll be able to shake the entire neighborhood apart with this setup, a move that will surely lower the property values in this neighborhood even more!

Gah, I’m talking about home prices just as much as I’m talking about hot speakers. If that’s not a clear sign that I’m slowly turning into an adult, I don’t know what is. Then again, it’s hard not to pay attention to all this stuff these days, since it’s everywhere. I bet it’s a really interesting time to be enrolled in an economics class. Lots of modern examples of things going bad to (hopefully) learn from.

“Sir, why is it still so hard to figure out which home theater receivers are right for me?”

That’s the IM-based cry for help I sent out to a friend this morning after finally realizing that I wouldn’t be able to come to any conclusion on my own. Here’s my situation:

I have a rapidly aging home-theater-in-a-box setup made by Kenwood. It’s a standard 5.1 deal, nothing ultra fancy. It’s done a fine job for the past, like, seven years or so. But I’m looking for something more, something that will handle 1080p video and has at least two HDMI inputs, as well as component ins (for my Wii) and perhaps an S-video (for my DirecTV receiver).

Right now, I have to run HDMI to the TV and use optical audio to my receiver. Since I only have one optical port there, I have to run the optical cables out of my 360 and PS3 into an A/V switcher that I used to use when everything was using component. It’s messy, using more cables than I’d like and making switching everything on take some time.

I also don’t want to spend a zillion dollars. Last time I looked, something like this was around 700 bucks, which seems too high of a price to pay for mere convenience. I figure I’ll save my money for when I want to get some new home theater speakers instead. I’m pretty sure I blew out my subwoofer at some point and figure I might as well replace everything while I’m at it.

I’m sort of surprised that there isn’t some sort of big gaming-focused article or section of a site out there devoted to addressing this topic comprehensively. You’d think that a retailer would put something like this together, even if all us gaming-focused sites are too busy covering games to really nail the peripheral stuff.

This line is in EB/GameStop’s top slot copy for why you should buy Fable 2.

“You can even get married and have children or take Smokey Robinson’s advice and shop around.”

You know, it wasn’t until someone injected Smokey Robinson into the conversation that Fable 2 made any sense to me at all. THANKS for putting it all in such a clear and relevant perspective, EB!

Of course, all this is coming from a guy building a site where most headlines are even more obscure references than that one… hmm…

Speaking of said site, it’s awesome. It’s coming together so, so well. And quickly, too. It seems like there are like five or ten new things about it that blow me away every day. And everything I think of and worry about, the guys building the site have almost always thought of already. Like we said on the podcast this week, look for something to show up the week after E3.

A handful of you have been posting comments here asking about Points! videos. We are effectively building a site where the editorial tone makes the whole thing like one big installment of Points!. It’s freewheeling and from the heart, but respectfully so. I don’t really see me recording any videos at home in the near future, because anything I would say here, I can say on Giant Bomb instead.

Though I was thinking of maybe doing a live stream from my bedroom. That might be funny. And by funny I mean sad. Funny/sad is funnier than funny every single time.

Next week I’ll be in Los Angeles for E3, which is actually pretty thrilling. After covering this trade show in a very specific way for the past several years, it’s going to be fun to try something different.

Of course, there are games there, too. Maybe I’ll write up a list of games I desperately want to see more of at some point, but I can tell you that any such list starts with Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe. Apparently MKvDC will also be at Comic-Con. That was almost enough to make me go to San Diego, but this whole “putting a site on the Internet” thing is pretty important, too.

Oh, last thing. I got this via a Kane’s Wrath press release earlier today and thought it was pretty awesome.

• Game with Developers – Sign onto Xbox Live Friday night from 7 PM – 10 PM ET and show off your multiplayer skills against members of the EALA development team, including:

·         KWDevJim: Jim Vessella, Lead Producer

·         KWDevAlan: Alan Newton, Tester

·         KWDevJason: Jason Savopolos, Tester

·         KWDevJeremy: Jeremy Feasel, Designer

·         KWDevKeith: Keith Schaefer, Producer

·         KWDevWes: Wes Eckhart, Development Director

·         KWDevNick: Nick Clifford, Lead Tester

·         KWDevGreg: Greg Kasavin, Producer

·         KWDevMario: Mario Grimani, Development Director

Now that’s a Game With Fame if I ever saw one. 

Just finished Metal Gear.

Yeah, it’s awesome.

- Sitting in the Vegas airport, writing about Capcom games on my laptop that’ll post on Tuesday. Impressive lineup.

- Scanning the airport’s free wi-fi network for shared files.

- Hoping my 7:35 flight doesn’t get delayed.

- Noticing some stiffness in my left thumb, which indicates that I don’t play arcade games nearly often enough anymore.

- Wishing I didn’t throw away the Burger King cup I had, so that I could go get a refill.

Highs in the low-to-mid-90s here at home, making me realize how great it is to work near the water. Actually, it was crazy hot there, too, but a nice shady lunch spot on the water can always beat the heat.

My house likes to retain heat. So it’s 83 degrees outside right now, but it’s probably more like 85-88 inside. Naturally, that makes this the perfect day for me to start playing Wii Fit, right?

I should have bought a house with a pool when I had the chance.

Nothing like catching a cold right before a busy week. I’m over here mainlining soup and DayQuil with hopes for the best. The great bonus is that while I was out getting more cold-deflecting drugs, I managed to stop by the game shop and get a copy of The World Ends With You. After reading so many nice things about it, it sounded like the sort of thing I needed to see for myself.

But first I need to play more Boom Blox.

I’m so totally sick of reading these “OH CRAP IRON MAN IS OUT THE SAME WEEK AS GRAND THEFT AUTO WILL PEOPLE GO SEE IT????” stories. MTV’s got one of its own now.

I’m sure there’s something to it, as the dorks who would be most likely to go see Iron Man are probably the same dorks who would have more fun staying in and playing more GTA, but when people try to pin the woes of the movie exhibition business on games, it’s almost as pathetic as the music industry’s excuses for its own downturn.

1. Movie theaters have become an awful way to see a movie. Unless you hold some nostalgia for sticky seats and popcorn–you know, the “theater experience” or whatever–actually going to a movie theater has felt like an awful waste of time to me for years. Even if I didn’t have a sizable TV and a passable sound system, I’d rather gather up some friends and watch a movie at home. Since I’ve laid out the cash for decent equipment, I usually end up getting a better-looking, better-sounding movie than what most theaters offer these days.

2. Dude, it’s Iron Man. Hardly an A-lister in the Marvel world, unless things have somehow changed since I last followed comics. If Iron Man tanks, it’s probably because MOST PEOPLE HAVE NO CLUE WHAT THE HELL AN “IRON MAN” IS. Though as a counterpoint, if someone told me “hey, there’s a movie coming out where Robert Downey Jr. drinks and flies around fighting dudes,” I’d probably want to know more about it.

3. I once urinated on a seat in the back of a movie theater out of spite. To my knowledge, no one has urinated on my couch (yet).

So, yeah, I’ll probably stay in and play GTA, but not at the expense of Iron Man. I already didn’t care about that.

I think I messed up my shoulder while pretending to Hula Hoop today.

More on that in a few days.