Penny Arcade Kickstarter needs to be kicked out.

I’m going to preface this entire post by saying that I have been frequenting the Penny Arcade website for years as well as going to PAX prime whenever possible. However, I think the Penny Arcade’s Kickstarter is dubious at best. While clearly thousands of people are going to disagree with me here, there is no good reason for PA to be using Kickstarter to pay their bills.

So the crux of my complaint here is that nothing is really being started. All of the money is intended to be used to cover the things that their ad revenue currently covers. Nothing new is actually being funded unless you count the hypothetical projects that may happen.  For a quarter of a million dollars, they will remove one banner ad from the homepage of their website for a year. For a full million, they’ll remove them all from the site. In a year, they’ll try and tap their fans’ wallets again. I’m not even exaggerating – they say as much in their own post: “This is for a period of 1 year.

Drinking all the beer.

It’s summer! Even here in the Pacific Northwest, the sun is out and the temperatures are rising. That can mean only one thing, or maybe multiple things, but it does coincide with the 2012 Seattle International Beerfest. SIB is one of my personal favorite annual events in Seattle. There is usually an eclectic mix of people enjoying a common love of liquid goodness.

Starting SIB off with The Stoic from Deschutes brewery in Oregon.

This year the festival features a mouthwatering array of brews from all over the world including incredibly rare offerings such as the Samuel Adams Utopias. But beyond the beer, there are
numerous amazing local food vendors on hand to provide cheeses, nuts, tortas, hot dogs, and more. My personal recommendation for a good snack is the cured meat and cheese pairings on a stick from Mt. Townsend Creamery.

It’s no secret that I am a fan of the darker beers, and there are far too many porters and stouts for me to try over the course of the weekend. If you can only make one day of the festival and need to taste with the 10 tickets you get with entry, allow me to suggest the Mad Viking Cognac IRS, the Two Beers Ascension, the Zhiguli Grande 12%, the Double Mountain Ferocious Five, and the Wingman P-51

Murdering gods the old fashioned way; with 16-bit graphics

Last week Zeboyd released Penny Arcade’s On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3 on Steam. Being a working guy, I waited until the end of the week to pick it up with the bundled copies of Breath of Death VII and Cthulhu Saves the World. I don’t think that I could actually be more pleased with a title, especially at this price point. If you’re unfamiliar with the previous games in this franchise, they’re definitely worth a play through. This 3rd installment is a complete departure mechanically and visually, but the incredible writing and witty banter of the characters remains completely intact and is a shining example of why writing is vastly more important than flashy graphics in the RPG genre.

Firstly, let’s hit on the differences between this offering and the previous two. The biggest of these is the absence of the player created character. Your garden implement wielding protagonist will be sorely missed, but is replaced by a couple new entries that are equally well written and provide pointed commentary peppered with poignant comedy. Mechanically, the active battle system (of which I was never the biggest fan) has been replaced