So this little demo for Battlefield 1942 has me in an uproar. I've played the game pretty much nonstop since it's release, and it's the little things that piss me off. Maybe they're not so little, but I mean little in a sense that any programming dolt could figure out a way around these problems.

First I love the vehicles. Ever since Doom I've wanted to drive vehicles around in a DM. That's great, so why make a jeep that you can't shoot from the passenger side? Is there some rule that says you must either man a vehicle's weapon to fire else you must sit nice with your arms folded across your lap during the ride? Halo got it right, and that's for a Downgraded PC!

Glitches. There is this nasty glitch that runs through my game during any time of the game where it pauses every three seconds. It's not my computer, it's the game, because I've tried just about every conceivable solution with failure at every corner. Another problem is in-game the server list continues to update because ten minutes of heavy refresh-lag later you might want to jump on a server that's pinging under 500.

These are easy enough to fix, and hopefully by the time this game hits the shelves, they could fix it so they don't look like such idiots over a teeny tiny problem like this. Eh? It's gone gold? Wonderful!

"Great, its Battlefield MOHAARTCWWWIIONLINEDOD 1942!"
-Will

Here's a little old diddy that I promised I'd share with the rest of you once the comic was at it's prime. (Or at least more hits than what we test with!) It was back in the Napster days and Camp Chaos decided to fire one back at Metallica for whining and actually supporting the RIAA because they couldn't stand anyone illegally listening to their music. They were once my favorite band. The only bad thing, (besides Napster getting shut down) was watching Dr. Dre's courtroom example of online music piracy which involved handing out M&Ms on a street corner.

"AH! A hungry hungry hippo!"

Hey all! First off, there's a new strip up, obviously. I hope you get a kick out of it. Next up is some linkage that's well past due. The first batter up to the plate is Tom from Theater Hopper. It's a great Monday/Wednesday/Friday comic that focuses on, what else, movies. Tom (not to be confused w/ Tom from our Troy's Bucket) is another local boy, from West Des Moines. Together we are going to take the Web by storm, and soon people will see Iowa as THE place for webcomics! People will come from all over to set up their own online strips, not to mention bow at our feet and give us gifts of delicious Pocky! Or, maybe we'll just hang out at Limey's and get our drink on sometime.

Next up is Dave Stanworth's Snafu comic. Like most of you, Dave caught our link from PvP, and asked us to check out his strip. I'm glad he did, it's a lot of fun. His strip has the son of Satan in it, our strip has Will. I'm not really sure which is more evil, but if I had to I'd put money on our guy. I mean, Damien may have grown up in Hell, but that's pretty weak when you compare it to Iowa!

Both of these new strips can now be found in our own links section, affectionately referred to as the Cheap Pops. We're adding more soon, so be sure to keep your eyes open.
Finally, some of the TB crew are going to be at Anime Iowa this weekend. If you're going to be there and want to meet your comic heroes in real life, then be sure to send us an e-mail. As for me, I'm going to try to track down Hot Soup from Lethal Doses fame, as word has it he'll be in attendance.

Beaner

"It's our time. It's OUR time, down HERE!"

So I managed to catch the new "He-Man and the Masters of the Universe" animated movie/show on Cartoon Network this past weekend. I was a bit hesitant about it at first because it seems nowadays that everyone is caching in on the nostalgia factor and trying to make a quick buck off of people's fond memories. If this is done in the same quality as the new He-Man cartoon then I am all for it. I have to say that I was quite impressed with it and my hat is off to all of those involved. Not only did the show treat the original material with respect, but it greatly improved upon it. All of the classic characters were there and each was just as I remembered them. I was worried that they'd mess up Skeletor but he came off with a nice blend of humor and malevolence. Even the jokes and comedy played out well and really felt natural and not forced. I greatly enjoyed both Skeletor and He-Man's epic fight near the end, which was supported by fantastic animation. All in all, a fantastic movie and highly enjoyable. If you haven't had the opportunity to see it, Cartoon Network will be airing it again soon. You can find the scheduled times on their website.

Of course, no mention of the He-Man cartoon would be complete without bringing up the promo that was shown for the new Transformers: Armada show. Out of all the members of Troy's Bucket, I'd easily say that my love of the Transformers is unmatched. That was the first toy line that I latched on to as a kid and really never let go of. I'm eagerly anticipating this new show to see how it plays out. From what I've been hearing, there is some definite potential. Hasbro is really going gung-ho with this whole new Armada wave by incorporating a toy launch, new cartoon, and comic series simultaneously. Everything that is being done with the comics by Dreamwave is fantastic. I very much enjoyed he first issue of Armada in addition to the excellent six-part Generation 1 mini-series. I hear that the response to the six-parter is so good that Dreamwave will be doing a second one sometime soon.

My reactions to the Armada toy line itself are mixed. I'm finding the toys to be a bit bland and lacking cool details that their previous counterparts contained in the Robots in Disguise line. I found the RID line to be quite good and faithful reproductions of the Japanese toys Takara put out. I wish Hasbro had continued this line because I think there is a good market for a revamped Generation 1 line featuring old favorites in updated styles using modern toy manufacturing technology. Speaking of old favorites, kudos to Hasbro for putting out the Generation 1 reissues, thus saving me a great deal of money by having to import the Japanese ones. The first three in the series are the original Optimus Prime, Ultra Magnus, and Rodimus Major (Hot Rod). Wave 2 will include the original Starscream and Powermaster Optimus Prime. Word has it that Hasbro wants to reissue Soundwave as well since they're big fans of him. My nipples are hard just thinking out that!

Back to the Transformers: Armada animated show, you can catch it this Friday during Cartoon Network's Toonami block. The promo I saw for it was fantastic and featured a voice-over by one Peter Cullen, the voice of the original Optimus Prime. Just hearing him mention Autobots and Decepticons gave me goose bumps. Word has it Prime and Megatron in the show will be voiced by the Beast Wars actors, which is good news. Even better would be if they had actually used Peter Cullen for the show. But the Beast Wars guys were also quite good and I think they'll work out nicely. To make things even more exciting, the show has great-looking animation and appears to sport a bit more mature theme than the Robots in Disguise show did. Mature is definitely the way to go since a good portion of the audience will be old enough to drink. Ha, I knew I could work drinking into a completely unrelated topic! I'm not saying that we need tons of robot violence and fighting for it to be mature. We don't need to blast Iron Hide in the face with Megatron's fusion canon again, but hey, it certainly couldn't hurt.