Warren G. Report

Certainly any PC gamer with a pulse for the past decade has been salivating profusely over the prospect of playing Starcraft II, whose release date has remained a solid “when it’s done” since 1999. Time and time again you’d hear from the screeching and giddy mouths of avid gamers: “I can’t wait for this game to be released” and “I’m getting it the day it comes out” and “the suspense is killing me!”  The most anticipated computer game of all time caused an untold number of gamers to claw in vain at the fabric of time in the hopes of expediting the release date.

Earlier this year, the beta for Starcraft II had opened up after a drawing to a few hundred lucky folks throughout the United States.  This multiplayer beta was the full multiplayer game and Battle.net package, allowing beta participants to play every map, every unit, every race — the whole enchilada with nothing held back.  Only the single-player campaign (i.e., what’s fired up when everyone else is asleep or attending funerals) is inaccessible.  Essentially, this is thee final game.  Small tweaks here and there, but this beta is the real deal.  It’s not some broken piecemeal test; it’s Starcraft II!  The difficulty, of course, was being fortuitous enough to snag an ultra rare beta key — a statistical impossibility.

Lo and behold, Gamestop.com comes out with this deal a week ago: for the duration of the one-week sale, anyone who preorders a copy of Starcraft II gets a beta key.  That meant anyone and everyone could finally at long last vanquish the agonizing suspense, put an end to the yearning, and cease the pining.

And what of the response out of the Jerk Lab, who had for a decade howled for the release of Starcraft II? The same bunch who had glued their very eyes to mere preview clips of precious gameplay? “Meh.”  No one could bring themselves to put $5.00 down on a preorder for a game that they swear they would have purchased anyway.  Abraham Lincoln ultimately stood between them and immediately playing the virtual entirety of Starcraft II.  Five bucks can’t get you a value meal.  Bums on streets would scoff indignantly at only being offered a fiver.

It’s not like you lose the five bucks, either.  Those five bucks go toward the final purchase.

Well, enjoy the additional wait.  It could be months until the final version goes gold and hits store shelves.

But despair not!  On the bright side, those five bucks could earn you $0.25 in interest at the bank over the course of the next half year.  Unfortunately, you’ll need about double that amount to snag some M&M’s out of a gumball machine.

It’s official – the WGR has declared the PC version of Modern Warfare 2 to be resoundingly superior to the Xbox 360 version. To begin with, you can actually see into the distance. It’s like putting on a pair of glasses for the first time. No more guessing what 4 to 5 squiggly pixels might be (plant or an enemy? no idea!).  Not only is the resolution higher (1920 x 1080 versus 1024 x 600), but the distance is rendered with much higher levels of detail and clarity.

Second, the mouse means no more fumbling with an awkward control scheme that can boast nothing better than dual wild analog sticks.  I’d rather not use the same device that can pick up a stuffed animal out of this thing:

Reports of rampant cheating? Cheaters are here and there on both platforms (PC & Xbox 360).

On a side note, how could anyone make fun of the Wii with its 480P if Modern Warfare 2 on the Xbox 360 is displaying at 600P? Is that what it takes to go from “Standard Definition” to “High Definition?” One-hundred and twenty horizontal lines?

The hard concept of preloading clearly eludes (and how) the Steam digital gaming service (www.steampowered.com).  What Steam allows users to do is purchase games online and download them as opposed to having to fire up the gas guzzler and possibly get into an accident in the process.  At any rate, Steam allows users to “preload” games prior to their actual retail release date; that way, you don’t have to download the game as soon as it is released.  It’s ready to go the same moment that you’d be able to buy the game in a brick and mortar store.

Unfortunately, for the vast majority of the time, after people have already preloaded, by the time any game is actually and finally released, there is some sort of change that forces a complete re-download.  It happens time and time again.

Well, I’m sick of it, Steam.  So I’m formally filing a complaint as soon as I figure out who that would even go to. I mean it. I really mean it.

A blog is an abbreviation of ‘weblog’. To say “web blog”, you’re essentially saying “web weblog”. You might as well say “ATM Machine” – Automatic Teller Machine Machine. These kinds of silly mistakes not only bring shame to you, but also to your family.

Undeniably, the Logitech Z-2300 2.1 speaker system is one of the happy mediums of audio setups for home theater or gaming (if not the one and only). It’s clean, has an ample two-hundred watts to work with, and it’s reliable. Right now, you can buy one of these speakers on sale at Newegg for $149.25, down from its “original” price of $164.25. The sale is being billed as a “blowout bargain”.

But that’s funny, because I recall purchasing one of these in December of 2005 (not on sale) for $94.98. And again as a gift in December of 2007 for $105.00, also not on sale.

Thanks a lot, China!

Update: Now it’s back to $164.25. You missed it, people. You missed the blowout.

There are those who need to touch the burning of the stove before what they’ve learned in traffic school sinks into their thick heads. I’m talking about traffic circles here, where apparently very few people know how to get into one the right way.  Where are the cops?  There’s your ticket gold mine!  Sure, the lazy ones would rather sit in speed traps and write a single ticket every ten or fifteen minutes.  But the go-getting police cops out there would have nothing short of a field day if they staked out any of the local traffic circles.

Some serious suggestions:

• Triple, no quadruple the size of the yield signs.  I’m not kidding.
• Put high-powered, red and white strobe lights on the borders of the yield signs.
• Install road spikes that shoot up when an approaching car is already in the circle, and only goes down when the said car has safely passed.
• Stop giving driver’s licenses to Taggies already!  You wouldn’t give a drivers’ license to a bear or poodle, so why give one to a Taggie?

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You really have to wonder whether or not the “steak” at Moe’s Southwestern Grill Restaurant is actually steak or, you know, el carne de burro. I’ve noticed that the “steak” is more expensive than the chicken or the ground beef, and why might that be? Seriously, let’s stop kidding ourselves. It is because the “steak” had a long way to travel. Do you know what place is pretty far away? Mexico.

The entire world at the moment is up in arms (the appendages) over the latest nuke test that was carried out some hours ago by the North Koreans. The world is very mad, angered, and dismayed over this turn of events, which happened to weave its way into an outcome hat that the world wasn’t hoping to wear on its head any time soon. This outrage has “provoked” many “an angry response” from most of the world governments, who swear that they’ll stop selling exercise machines and audio equipment (read: sanctions) that China will just keep on selling to them, anyway. Also, I think the world will stop selling spray bottles for plants – now you’ve done it, NK.

But when it comes down to it, should the world really be anywhere nearly as shocked, dismayed, and surprised as it was reported to be this morning? Should chewed bits of toast and biscuits really have been ejected from the mouths of coughing diplomats? Not really, when North Korea hasn’t been gifted with a basketball signed by Michael Jordan in over a decade (at least!). From what the Warren G. Report has gathered, the latest basketball had become deflated when Kim Jong-il had accidentally bounced it on a rather “glassy and shiny” court; the best and brightest in NK couldn’t quite repair the ball back to its former state, despite their most stalwart efforts. This led to years of sadness for Kim Jong-il, for he felt antagonized and not very loved.

Can you blame a sad man for behaving like a sad man? All those strongly-worded letters that have ended up in North Korean mailboxes certainly couldn’t have helped matters, either.

PC Gamers worldwide and the Jerk Lab alike have had their hearts broken by woefully unfulfilled promises in the past few years and even days. For PC Gamers, the promise was always of a certain “Duke Nukem: Forever” title which couldn’t seem to get anywhere close to that final release status. Month after month, year after year, the developers of Duke Nukem: Forever were no nearer to a release than when they had started. Finally, after more than a decade of screwing around, the developer went ultra-bankrupt and slammed shut their front office doors for good. (The back doors have been pried open for illicit activity, according to a crack WGR reporter.)

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Panera Bread has seen better days.  I’m afraid disappointment is alive and well at Panera, as nearly every conceivable aspect of the restaurant (if one could throw it into such a classification) has suffered enormously.  The WGR has no idea if this suffering of quality across the entire board was the consequence of a tanking economy, bruising inflation, or just pure and simple greed.    What the WGR does know is that it’s becoming more and more difficult to eat at Panera and come out happy afterward.

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