GR Mailbag: The Keyboard is Mightier Than The Pen!

From: *********@aol.com

Subject: something
who is the weakest guy/girl on the staff? who on the staff 
can kick the most ass?

Dear Fighting Fan,

Those are super-easy questions and frankly, we thought it was rather obvious.

The weakest member of the GR team would have to be Shawn Sparks. There's this little kid named Shamus who is less than half Spark's size, and Shamus beats the crap out of Sparks every time they get together. It's really quite sad.

But our staff member that can kick the most ass is easily our very own femme fatale: A. A. White. She's got an arsenal of weapons that would make The Punisher look like an altar boy and she's well versed in 89 different forms of unarmed combat, including the legendary Crying Fetus stance.

Once she defended all of Europe from rabid, invading paratrooper house cats, it was spectacular!

Besides, anybody that could do this to a poor old lady is more than our Dorito munchin' asses can handle.

(Kitty picture submitted by David Wurzel)

- GR

From: "Erik Smith" 
Subject: Johnny New Gamer
This is to all the people who write into GR complaining 
about their harsh reviews.

Just because you have a crush on Lara Croft does not 
mean that "Tomb Raider Alpha7: Lara Puzzle Kart Racing 
Party" is a good game. Just because Final Fantasy VII 
was the first role-playing game that you played doesn't 
make it the best RPG there ever was. And just because 
you read message board on an up and coming system does 
NOT make you an expert.
I¹m sick and tired of reading all these complaints from 
people who have noidea what they¹re talking about.
Of course everyone is entitled to his or her opinion - 
this is America damnit. I¹m not saying that disagreeing 
with a GR review makes you a moron (though I could) I¹m 
just saying that "you guyz are dumb. XYZ was the best game 
that EVR was and U guyz dont know what your fucking talking 
about Im never reading your crappy site again" is not a 
very good argument and only reinforces the proven notion 
that only a moron could have liked the game that you're 
defending.

so please people, keep your damn opinions to yourself 
unless you actually have something to say and let the rest 
of us discuss the pros and cons of gaming like the 
intelligent (if not jaded) gamers that we are.

Bonzai 

 P.S. Final Fantasy 7 sucked, Cloud was a schmuck and 
Tifa was ugly

Go Erik,

Someone give this guy a job! From now on, please redirect all GR hate mail to our new enforcer, Erik.

We couldn't have said that better ourselves. Actually that's a lie, we could have, but we're lazy bastards and Sex in The City is about to start. Later!

-GR

From: Isabella Clump
Subject: Ben, where are thee?

Dear Ben, and other GR dudes,
Ben, you must run away with me, far away in a land where 
children run free! Your friends Brian, Duke, and Shawn 
can come with us, but they must be locked away somewhere 
in a jail cell, we don't want them bothering us! You can 
visit them occasionally, and perhaps bring them out to 
play, but I don't want them slobbering all over me, make 
sure they are trained well. Oh please, I beg of you, for 
all of those gamers and other people out there to see my 
dying love for you, post this message in the mailbag. 
They must see!
Your love,
Isabella Clump

Hi Isabella,

Well, it's common knowledge that all the Clump women have taken a "special" interest in our dashing young Editor King. But it seems this one in particular may be the closest to stealing his heart.

Who knows young readers, soon we may hear the pitter patter of fat little feet from a GR swarming with tiny Bennies.

- GR

From: "****aol.com"
Subject: (no subject)
you are a loser starcraft is the best game ever its
not confusing and on the 
box it says that it was the best multiplayer game
todate if you cant read you shouldnt be rating games

Hello Incognito,

Wow! That's great advice! Now we don't have to review anything anymore, we can just copy the back of the box.

I mean, they would never put something there if it wasn't true, right?

This is terrific! A quck scan of the boxes on our gaming shelf proves that we now own many of the best games of all time. In fact, all of them say great things! Wow! We must have been wrong when we thought that some of those games sucked.

We're so very, very happy.

- GR

The Next Gen Headaches!

From: "Chris DuMelle"
Subject: X-Box Questions
Hello, I had a few questions regarding the possible 
quality of X-Box games. 1: Most games come out in 
Japan and first and show up in the US a few month
later giving developers time to do translations and 
tweak the game a bit.
The addition of anti-aliasing on Tekken Tag is a 
good example. Being an American system, will the 
X-Box lose some of these final tweaks in the US,
while Japan gets the slightly improved version?
2: I understand a lot of PC developers have signed 
on to create X-Box games.
This has me slightly worried. PC developers are not 
exacting known for
having bug free games. Are we seeing the beginings 
of console patches? Traditional console developers 
know that what they ship had better be bug free 
because there is no way to patch it save for a 
recall (BTW, has that ever happened?). With the 
X-Box's hard drive PC developers may think it's
business as usual. Should I be worried?

Greetings Chris,

1. That's a tough one to answer at this point - really only time will tell. But it's quite possible that US gamers will get the relatively less desired Xbox game versions because it has been "tweaked" and improved for the overseas market. Note to Microsoft: We are not your beta testers!

2. It's true, PC developers often release unfinished titles that need to be patched after they hit the store shelves. But one of the reasons this occurs is because it's nearly impossible to create a game that is 100% compatible with every PC out there. PCs are like snowflakes - you'll be hard pressed to find any two that are exactly alike. And this makes it hard to assure stability across the board.

Consoles don't have this issue because there is a single standard. The inside of all Playstations is inherently the same. This will be the case for the Xbox (Unless we missed something)- one system, one standard!

What could throw this all off is when these systems become internet ready. The Xbox ships with a hard drive (10 gig I believe). This sounds like a blessing as load times should diminish greatly. But will this open up the portcullis to driver and patches hell? Could be. This is our biggest concern.

Being online with a hard drive could give developers a very easy and very familiar way to make their deadlines. I can see it now...

Average Gamer: "Hey how come when I play the Xbox's Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2X, none of the riders have skateboards?"

GR Reviewer: Well, the marketing department said the game needed to be released by the fall but "they" weren't done yet so "they" decided to release it anyway and have a patch ready for download later.

Sound familiar? You PC gamers know what I'm talking about.

Let's just hope that our PC's dirty habits aren't picked up by their younger console cousins.

-GR