Review – Sam & Max: Night of the Raving Dead

I’ll be honest with you. When I started writing this review, I was only doing it to get this game out of the way. I really wanted to review episodes 4 and 5, and it just didn’t seem right to skip this tale of the emo undead, no matter how mediocre I may have found it upon first playthrough. As I began writing, however, I realized that this game taught me something. It taught me why I play Sam and Max. Not a deep, meaningful life lesson by any means, but a lesson nonetheless.

To catch people up who haven’t played the game already, New York is invaded by hoards of zombies, and Sam and Max must travel to Stuttgart in order to stop them at their source: a castle-turned-goth-club called “The Zombie Factory.” →  Read the rest

Tales From Behind the Counter – Santa Claus Cometh

Last night, I walked into a video game store that was swamped with trade-ins. I could barely make out my manager and another co-worker behind the counter for the stacks of NES games that were piled before them; it was like Christmas…of 1989. Classics like Ice Breakers, Ducktales, RC Pro-Am, and countless others littered the counter top as my geeky colleagues waded through processing all of the games in order to give our Santa Claus his grand total of trade-in credit that the store was bestowing upon him for his generous endowment.

In Germanic folklore, Santa was this skinny guy that dressed in green clothing and gave out gifts to good children while beating the bad ones. Kind of like a strung out father who would smack his kids around while waiting in line at the methadone clinic. →  Read the rest

EA: Level 10 alchemists, Level 1 Tech Support Part 2

When we last left our heroes, they were encountering fucktardery of the highest order at EA while trying to get a replacement Rock Band guitar. After muddling his way through their horrible tech support, my roommate managed to talk to a real human being who was able to fix the problem. Days later, a new guitar showed up. Even better, there was no accountability attached to the guitar to indicate we needed to return the foot pedal they had mistakenly sent. Gleeful, we were in the process of trying to figure out how to scam EA. Our thought was that we might install the new foot pedal and attempt to return the old one for a SECOND new foot pedal. This would arm us with a spare in the event of a foot pedal malfunction. →  Read the rest