I've been out of the office all week, as some variety of Streptococcus has colonized my wife. I've had to parent full time for three days, just three fucking days, and already I know why housewives once turned to Laudanum.

Because we tend to come around for the high point of Halo's arc - in when a new game has been released, all but out before the first map pack hits - our core skills only tick up marginally from game to game, barely abreast of their inevitable atrophy. People who play Halo specifically, people who play Halo because it is Halo and not because it is a videogame, eat us alive.

I have had the opportunity to play the new Castle Ravenloft board game a handful of times now and I’m very impressed. We brought it over to a friends house the other night and played it with someone who had never even touched a D20 before. She listened to us discuss all the ways that it was similar to D&D 4e and then asked why we would play this board game instead of just playing normal Dungeons and Dragons. I thought that was a really good question and coming up with an answer made me realise why I like the game so much.

This is essentially how I feel about Halo. I can probably count on one hand the number of discrete rounds I've played alone. It would be like eating a pizza alone. I've done that, too; not much there to be proud of.

Blams!  We've got them, hot and fresh.  Savor them!  Or it.

Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions knows what it is, and doesn't try to convince you otherwise: it's fanservice, served neat in a highball glass. The contextual jumping can feell raw, the camera sometimes makes poor life choices, and the year 2099 is so dense with stimuli that a person from 2010 can hardly make sense of it. It's also genuinely funny, not every now and then but often, which is a rare thing. Is it perfect? No. Does it have Spider-Man in it? Yes. Four times! That's way more than most games.

There was new Penny Arcade Television last week, but some stuff came up, and I forgot to link it.  So here it is:  VG Fack Checkerz, from our people at Mega64.    

Obviously the biggest announcement of PAX this year was Duke Nukem Forever. There was another announcement though that you might have missed. During our very first Q&A of the show we took the stage with Scott Kurtz to announce a brand new comic strip called the Trenches.

Frequently during panels at the Penny Arcade Expo our own Gabriel will receive compliments on his work. This is as it should be; the visual leap between the first strips and today's thrice-weekly offering is so absolute as to bring the true authorship of the earlier comics into question. You may click here for a harrowing, educational juxtaposition.

You might recall that during the last PAX on the west coast, I had to leave because (much to my great surprise) a human being was trying to emerge from my wife. I've have used the "nation" metaphor for PAX on multiple occasions, and it's a comparison with value - like Brigadoon, it is a fleeting kingdom. Born during the event proper, she is its princess - and all of PAX her shining court.

It's pretty incredible where young people draw the line between which which things are impossible and things which are made possible by inexplicable magicks. People living in a space station, right now over our heads, clearly that's not true. But a tiny flying person at the helm of some tooth based economy is a thing quickly absorbed.

We kept thinking about the Xbox Live price hike as the week went on, trying to divine its purpose, and came up with a big ol' goose egg. And a comic, I guess. And I ordered a big stack of cut-rate 12 month cards. But other than that, no. Well, get more money, I guess. That part is relatively straightforward.

The Bible Online, right? Where has this thing been?

Here is another of our Star Wars Political Cartoons:

There's a new Blamimation in town.  Well, there's a new Blamimation, but there's also a whole new way to experience them - Blamimation Nights.  Find out what it means to you. 

We've known Jim Zubkavich for a long time, and in a way, you probably know him too - his art is everywhere.  He's a webcomics pioneer, he did the art for that online Zork, and he works for UDON, so he's literally up to his ass in iconic works for Capcom.  He's taking some time to kick out a pulpy, dungeon crawler type comic called Skullkickers, so if you have enjoyed his other work (or if you just hate skulls) you should avail yourself of the prequel issue, which is free online through that Comixology thingy.