If any of you were interested in getting some more detailed updates on Must Come Down, or are curious about what I’m going to be doing in Japan, you can check out my personal blog. You know, if you want.

Gerry Maravilla’s short film DONNA has just been accepted into the Action on Film festival in Los Angeles! For all you lovely people that bought a DONNA DVD, you directly helped this happen so you are the best. Read more about this awesomeness at Gerry’s blog. If you’re in the area and want to come see it on the Big Skreen, there’s a link to purchase tickets at Gerry’s blog. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to be there because I have to fly out to Salt Lake City on the 26th for Must Come Down, but you can hang out with Gerry and be best budz forever. Also, if you haven’t seen DONNA yet and you want to – I am in it whoop whoop – email Gerry at gmaravilla21@gmail.com to check it out. Thanks again everyone for being the best ever.

Hey folks, new HAWP is up. First one that Justin edited pretty much all by his lonesome. Woo Justin! Check it out.

Also, for all of you lovely people that donated to Must Come Down, I’ll be making a more official post that details when I’ll be sending everything out after the deadline for the fundraising has passed. Thank you so much everyone!

Hey all, Donna is now password protected because Gerry is trying to submit it to different festivals and the like. If you want to see it again, you can shoot him an email and he’ll give ya the password. Thanks to everyone who watched it!

Kicking open the door to the bathroom while Ashley Davis is on the toilet with this song queued up to 00:25 and blaring at full blast behind me, before shouting “IT’S TIME TO FIND ADVENTURE” and continuing to stare at her, silent and frozen in adventurous pose, until she finishes her business.

So, if any of you follow Anthony on Twitter or saw the Facebook status update I made literally five seconds ago, you’ll know that I was working my way through Fable II. I say “was” because now I’m done and feeling quite emotionally drained. I don’t want to give anything away, so if you’ve completed Fable II then feel free to hit the jump to answer the question posed by the title of this post. You really shouldn’t spoil it for yourself if you haven’t played it, though!

Read more…

So, long story short: lawyers are now cracking down on all of GameTrailers’ unlicensed music, which means I’ve gotta re-edit all of the previous HAWP episodes and get rid of the music I don’t have the rights to (which is to say, uh, all of it).

This isn’t a huge problem, as most of the problematic music is used during the end credits. Basically, if you or anyone else you know is really awesome at composing music, we’re on the lookout for a cool end credits theme for Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin’.

If you’re at all interested in composing a theme for us, just respond below with a link to the song in question. Anything goes — if you wanna do chiptunes, do chiptunes. If you wanna go orchestral, go orchestral. Totally up to you. I can’t promise any money if we end up choosing your song, but we’ll give you a credit, and you’ll at least have the satisfaction of knowing that your song will conclude nearly every episode of HAWP from here until doomsday. Or until we decide to switch themes.

1. At some point, you will cross a threshold and QTE failure means your characters will die, rather than just get bruised and battered.

2. The game does not tell you when you have crossed this invisible threshold.

Heavy Rain is not very good from any perspective, really, but these two small facts imbue the latter half of the game with more suspense than it truly deserves. Regardless of whether or not I really cared about any of the protagonists — I didn’t — the Super Hardcore Gamer in me will always desire total victory, and a quick glance at the trophies assured me that “total victory” translated to, “get to the end of the game with four characters still alive.” Everytime I got into one of the dozens of poorly-motivated QTE fight scenes, I couldn’t help but feel that niggling in the back of my head: “if you screw this up, this person is going to die and you’re not gonna be the Super Hardcore Gamer you thought you were.”

The fact that the game allows character death — that, as in Mass Effect 2, you may have to watch one of your crew die in front of you due to your choices and not be able to immediately undo it via a Game Over screen –  is such a goddamn useful tactic that I’m at a loss as to why we had to wait until 2010 (twenty-goddamn-ten!) to see it adopted in any significant way.

Heavy Rain’s plot may be ludicrous, and its first half may include as much meaningful player interaction as a finicky DVD player that has to be unpaused every thirty seconds, but I can’t deny the inherent suspense in being faced with a challenge and knowing that if I make poor choices, my actions will be permanent and won’t stop the overall story.