Really looking forward to New Vegas coming out next month. I've been bored as heck. I recently found a patched version of Namco X Capcom which was never translated and released in the west, so I'm trying to get it to work on an emulator, but with limited success. It looks awesome though. As you may have discerned from past comics, my favorite game ever is Final Fantasy Tactics, and this game seems to have that same tactics system, but with Capcom/Namco chars, so it looks pretty cool.

Argh, why is New Vegas so far away? It's going to basically be using the old engine, but in a way the original makers had intended Fallout 3 to be (or some facsimile). I can tell you now I don't give two craps of the storyline, though. The first thing I will do is maybe check into the first major town, see if there's regular lodging I can procure, and find a side quest to start like Moira's survival guide in Fallout 3. It's a great way to get a feel for the world, and the sensation of joy one gets from discovery is a narcotic-like effect. There is nothing more I love to do in Fallout 3 than crawl the 'dungeons' for the little rewards at the end that have no quests or missions associated with them.

I always think I'm going to play the bad guy in karma-based games, but I can rarely bring myself to do it. I always answer the way I really would and end up with like "Super Heavenly Benevolent God" karma status. One game I managed to be naughty in was Bioshock 2 (my second playthrough). The first few levels were absolutely grueling, trying to drain the little sisters instead of saving them. After a while, I grew numb to it because it was just a game, after all. It's harder to be actually 'evil' in Fallout, because you could repeatedly save towns and people, but if you steal a million worthless bent tin cans, you're the devil incarnate.

I'd hate to have that conversation with St Peter at the pearly gates.