Jeff Gerstmann is Still Alive

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.

It’s my extreme pleasure to invite you to check out giantbomb.com. It’s the “new thing” that you’ve been hearing me and Ryan drop hints about for the past week or so. I am jumping-out-of-my-seat excited about what we’ve done so far, and the best is ahead of us. Seriously, I can’t stop smiling and it’s sort of freaking me out. Be sure to watch G4’s X-Play today, where I’m pretty sure I sort of just start excitedly speaking nonsense near the end of the interview. It was hard to maintain my composure, for sure.

And none of this would be possible without the support of the people who’ve read and commented on this blog. Watching you react over the past few months has already shaped the site we’re building, and as we work to convert the temporary blog that’s available there into a full-fledged site about games, we’ll have your thoughts and desires in mind. Together, we’ll all be able to shape Giant Bomb. It’s already my new home. It’s my hope that it will become yours, as well.

Be sure to catch X-Play on G4 tomorrow (Thursday). Barring some sort of horrific car accident or other catastrophic happening, I’ll be appearing on the show!

If you don’t get G4, I believe they plan to post it on the show’s website sometime tomorrow, as well, just like last time. Either way, don’t miss it.

This is a lesson I learned quite some time ago, but figured I’d give it another shot and see if anything had changed. So I pre-ordered games from Amazon. Today, I got this:

We wanted to let you know that there is an unexpected delay with your video game order (Order# [removed]) you placed on [removed]. Unfortunately, we are unable to ship the product(s) as soon as we expected and need to provide you with a new estimate of when they may be delivered:
   “Army of Two” [Video Game]
    Estimated arrival date: 03/10/2008 - 03/11/2008

We apologize for the inconvenience caused by this delay.

I received a similar e-mail for Bully, which I canceled yesterday after finding it at a Best Buy. This seems to happen almost every single time I hear about someone pre-ordering a game from Amazon.

So the lesson, once again, don’t pre-order games from Amazon unless you don’t mind waiting a week or so to get your order. As for me, I guess I’ll go pick it up at Best Buy, which has easily become my favorite place to buy games because it’s generally hassle-free, with no people begging you to pre-order stuff, and they usually have enough copies in stock on the day of release, nice and easy. Like it should be.

I decided to give Amazon another shot because I was thinking of ordering GTA4 from them, since I have an Amazon Prime membership that gets me very cheap shipping, but forget it. I’ll just have to pay for shipping via Best Buy or GameStop or something this time. No way I’m willing to wait a full week for GTA.