I'm Sick of Gamers Being Labeled

Really, I am. It's quite tiring to hear gamers categorized as "hardcore" or "casual," and it's positively cringe-worthy to divide them by gender. It's bad enough that we have so slice up the male population into sub-categories, but now we have to place distinctions based on sex? Come on now.

It's been said that gamers are their own worst enemy when it comes to the public's perception of their hobby (passion?), and I tend to agree. The image of a nerdy, basement-dwelling fat guy who cares more about World of Warcraft than getting a job or laid seems to be firmly etched in the consciousness of those who know nothing about gaming. Many people still think that being a gamer means you're lazy and socially inept. As someone who juggles a wife and two kids, a profession, a writing career, and still finds the time to bring my Xbox 360 gamerscore to 45k, I think I can attest to just how full of shit this stereotype really is.

Then someone goes and writes an article about "how to get a gamer girlfriend" and fucks it all up.

Specifically, the article's title is "Kombo's Guide to Picking Up Gamer Chicks: Part One." Part one? You mean the process is complex enough to warrant turning the article into a serial? Geez, no wonder so many "guy gamers" are single.

Don't get me wrong, as my beef isn't with the author herself. Candice seemed like a nice person the few times we spoke over AIM, and I'm sure she's a splendid gal with a healthy outlook on life. No, my problem is with the way her article perpetuates one of the very stereotypes gamers profess to hating. For all of our ranting and raving, we always seem to shoot ourselves in the foot on this issue. It's almost as if we want the distinctions to be made, when there's no reason to. What constitutes a girl gamer? My wife likes Animal Crossing and Super Mario Bros. 3. Does that mean she qualifies? I sincerely doubt any of the suggestions from the article would have worked on her, and I'd probably still be single if I had ever attempted to show her how in awe I was at her Tetris skills compared to my past girlfriends.

This is just the latest example of how we carve ourselves up into little pieces, spending as much time on complaining about how many pieces there are as we do on the actual carving. Over the years, the gaming industry has arbitrarily attached labels to gamers, creating market segments that look lovely on a pie chart but mean little in reality. Are you "hardcore" or "casual?" Do you consider yourself a professional gamer or are you strictly an amateur? Can you list the differences between "guy" and "girl" gamers? There are so many terms for people who like video games (read: gamers), and I sometimes think that the backroom of my local GameStop or Toys 'R Us has game executives watching me through a one-way mirror, analyzing my purchases and classifying me accordingly. It's sickening.

Looking around the Internet, it's quite easy to google the term "casual gamer" (yes, google with a small /g/, as in a verb. Look it up; it's correct) and come up with all sorts of news articles with horrific titles. Christ, even Wikipedia has detailed articles differentiating what "casual" and "hardcore" gamers are. Not enough? How about checking out Casual Gamer, the website that, by its own description, was "created by a group a Casual Games enthusiasts." Thank you for that profound and informative explanation of your motives. I would never have figured it out otherwise.

Companies are jumping on the label bandwagon, with both Microsoft and Ubisoft even creating whole divisions directed at the "casual" gamer. A smart business move, considering that this new sector of the industry is worth a proported $2.25 billion each year. So big has it become, that there's even a Casual Gamer Association out there now! The issue that needs addressing here is how this affects the people who actually buy and play the games. Do the people buying Wiis and playing games for the first time consider themselves casual gamers?

The problem with labels becomes most painfully apparent when not even the biggest of gaming companies itself can decide whether or not they exist. Take Nintendo Europe's own managing director of marketing, Laurence Fischer, for example. In a prime example of brilliant marketing skill, Mr. Fischer told casualgamingbiz last May that he disliked the term "casual gamer." He said "“I don’t like the word casual. There’s a lot of meaning and interpretation of the word. For me you’re either a gamer or a non-gamer."

Sounds reasonable enough, right? Of course, being a marketing guru, it was only a matter of time before an outbreak of Foot-in-Mouth Disease set in. Addressing concerns about the Wii's limited storage space to Edge magazine, Fischer continued his blitzkrieg of brilliance and casually (see what I did there?) stated that only "geeks and otaku" would feel the need for a Wii hard drive. I guess we should have seen it coming though, as in that same May casualgamingbiz article, Fischer also explained away Animal Crossing's audience by saying "“It was really an otaku game – it had a small community of people playing a lot.” So much for consistency.

This is compounded by the tireless work of gaming journalists who latch onto these labels far too easily. Perhaps they feel that it makes them sound smarter or more in touch with their audience, but all it does is give serious journalists more ammunition for their argument about how gaming journalism isn't really journalism at all. You don't hear any other area of the business slicing its audience into separate categories based on how much news they listen to or how often they get involved with the subject matter. The closest I can think of is sports, and even then there isn't a clear breaking down of the audience by the press. I've yet to hear ESPN or Sports Illustrated refer to "fair weather" fans on a regular basis, even though the concept clearly exists around the water cooler. On the news and in sports periodicals, the kid playing baseball in the park by his house isn't "casual" compared to "hardcore" MLB players, and no one goes out of their way to make the contrasts between NBA and WNBA players apparent. Are their differences? Of course there are. That doesn't mean we have to constantly point them out. Some things forgo mentioning for fear of belaboring the obvious.

Perhaps if game companies, and more importantly, gaming journalists, took their audience more seriously, the need to use labels would disappear. Yes, people put things into categories on a regular basis, but that's just because this is the primary way in which human beings interact with their environment. Hell, I bet you placed this very article into a category as soon as you began to read it. We all do it, sure, but that doesn't mean we have to splash those categories all over the place for everyone to see them. If game publishers want to use their labels in the board room to discuss sales, then fine, just keep it out of the general vernacular. I'm tired of being classified under several sub-categories of gaming. It's dumb, divisive, and it only serves to keep gaming as the black sheep of hobbies despite its immense size and money-making prowess.

But as I said at the beginning, it would be unfair to place the blame solely on the corporations and the press. Gamers themselves are as guilty in this regard, and one need only listen to the vitriol spouted across the Internet about the Wii and how Nintendo has turned its back on "real" gamers. There are those who take pride in being labeled a "hardcore gamer" - I even wrote for a magazine named exactly that - but there's more than one definition of the term! The Wikipedia entry I linked to lists no fewer than five separate criteria for defining what a "hardcore" gamer is, and trying to understand it is more trouble than it's worth. Judging from the convoluted rationalization it offers, it might just be better to just stick with what Fischer initially said about it all: you're either a gamer or you're not.

My name is Ken Horowitz, and I am a gamer. And that's all.

Thoughts on "The King of Kong"

After months of trying, I was finally able to cat The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters on G4 last night. For those who haven't had a chance to see it, the movie is a great telling of the competition between Donkey Kong champ Billy Mitchell and unknown challenger Steve Wiebe. Wiebe, who plays religiously on the machine in his garage, manages to significantly beat Mitchell's two decade-old high score. He sends the tape in to Twin Galaxies, the official score keeper of video games, and has his score rejected because it was videotaped and not submitted in public. Twin Galaxies then goes on to accept a tape of Mitchell's after Wiebe beats his score in person at the New Hampshire arcade Funstop.

Although Twin Galaxies apologizes later on for its treatment of Wiebe and allows him to submit tapes in the future, the bias towards Mitchell is apparent from the get-go. While two referees are dispatched to Wiebe's Seattle home and proceed to dismantle his machine to see if the board had been tampered with (all while Wiebe isn't even home, mind you), no one questions Mitchell's taped run, which suffers from a mysterious flickering on the left side of the screen, conveniently covering his score just long enough for it to change.

Now that I've seen the movie, two things stand out to me. First off, Billy Mitchell comes off as an arrogant ass. He has amazing skill (he retook the Donkey Kong high score from Weibe a year after the movie was filmed and still holds it) and is undoubtedly the best professional gamer in history. However, Mitchell's skill is almost overshadowed by his attitude, and no matter how often he pleads his case in the movie - and it's a lot - you just don't want to take his side. Is this the real Billy Mitchell, or has he been unfairly portrayed? Other interviews with him that I've seen seem to point to the former.

Here's the best example. Numerous times during the film, Mitchell is interviewed and explains how the only way to prove someone is the best at a game is by playing in person. He makes several mentions about how only those who play in public can prove their skill and rightfully take their spot at the top of the mountain. On various occasions, Mitchell makes his position known, saying things like "To me, most important is to travel to a sanctioned location, like Funspot, that makes it official; if tomorrow Tiger Woods golfs a 59, big deal. If he does it at Augusta, that's where it counts."

The problem is that Mitchell is given three different chances to play against Wiebe head-to-head during the movie but always declines. When Wiebe defeats his score at Funstop, Mitchell already has a tape with a higher score en route to Twin Galaxies, which accepts it without question. For someone who is so sure of himself and thinks so little of Wiebe, he seemed awfully eager to keep from playing him head-on. Why not compete and shut everyone up once and for all? Mitchell eventually does put his money where his mouth is, but it's an entire year after the events in King of Kong, and while in public, it receives nowhere near the amount of buzz the movie did. Decidedly low key for someone who loves the spotlight as much as Mitchell does.

Second, I'm not entirely confident that Twin Galaxies was being fair here. Founder Walter Day has disputed the movie's portrayal of the situation, and he claims that Mitchell and Wiebe were on much friendlier terms than the film suggests. He also argues that he was never as biased against Wiebe as he's made out to be. Whether or not this is true, the fact that Day accepted Mitchell's video tape after disqualifying Wiebe's is controversial, to say the least. The board that Wiebe used to beat Mitchell's 1982 Donkey Kong score was provided by Roy Shildt, a longtime nemesis of Mitchell's, but it was never conclusively proven in the movie that it had been tampered with. You'd expect Twin Galaxies to at least treat Mitchell's low quality and questionable video tape with the same scrutiny as it had Wiebe's. It's only fair. I won't condemn Day and his organization, as he obviously tries to make amends with Wiebe during the film. I do think, though, that an organization that considers itself to be "official" shouldn't play favorites or consider anyone to be a "golden boy."

Overall, King of Kong is a great look into the world of professional video gaming, and anyone who is a fan of the industry should see it. The sense of competition between Mitchell and Wiebe is awesome, and now I have an almost instinctive urge to migrate to New Hampshire and play at Funspot. It's the place to go for this type of competition, and having now seen the movie, I can't help but wonder how many other neat little places like this there are around the country.

Personally, I love things like King of Kong, especially when they deal with the Golden Age of gaming and all those great titles from the early '80s. This movie is a treat for all retro gaming fans and should be in their DVD collections.

Delisting XBLA Games: The Latest Industry Blunder

In an effort to clean up the "clutter" on XBLA, Microsoft is going to delist those games that have been available for at least six months, have a metacritic rating lower than 65%, and haven't had a high conversion rate (the percentage of people buying a title after downloading the demo). According to MS, delisting said games will allow for a smoother and easier experience buying games for the service. To call this policy stupid would be an understatement. There are several things wrong with delisting titles, and none of them have to do with making anyone's experience more enjoyable.

Microsoft's reasoning is that this will help reduce the clutter on the Live marketplace. Say what? Clutter... on a digital store that has no physical presence? Why not just come out and tell the truth. These games are being delisted because Microsoft has gone batshit insane approving every turd proposed for XBLA, and now it wants to clean up by getting rid of the stinkers. The same company that denied Valve's Portal a berth on XBLA went and released Sudoku and Warlords (no good without a paddle!) just a few weeks ago. This is what I'm talking about.

The Xbox maker has made a great move by upping the maximum game size to 350MB, but there really shouldn't be a cap in the first place, just ask Capcom. This line of thinking is why we have a store filled with Frogger and Yaris, and no one's playing them, Jeff Minter be damned. We've heard developers complain about the glut of crap on XBLA before, and MS seems to want a quick band-aid solution to its blatant lack of quality control by sweeping the games under the rug - literally. All of the delisted titles will still be available for purchase via a friend's recommendation, and they're not actually being taken off the servers, just off the main list. You can even still play them online. So they're there... it just doesn't look like they're there. Brilliant.

There's a bigger problem than people not being able to find Dig Dug, one that almost no one is talking about. The threat of delisting not only plagues gamers who might be afraid that a game they've been meaning to buy might up and vanish, it also bodes ill for developers. Think of the company that wants to try something different. The whole selling point of services like XBLA. the Playstation Store, and WiiWare is that they offer developers a place to sell their games without the costs and pitfalls of retail distribution. Selling online allows them to take chances and go for that particular title that might never have had a chance to come to store shelves. If there's a threat of it being taken off the service, developers will be less inclined to think outside the box and take chances.

You might be able to argue that this will also keep them from making crap, but the glut we've seen so far is no one else's fault but Microsoft's. If it hadn't kept approving weak arcade port after weak arcade port, we wouldn't have so many of them. Telling game makers that their new titles have a chance of being delisted could be enough to make them take their wares to the Wii or Playstation 3. And let's be honest, making a game invisible to the general consumer is as good as eliminating it from the service entirely.

I sincerely hope that Microsoft rethinks this foolish policy. There's no need to take any games off the main page, and simply reducing their price a bit and assigning them to a bargain bin section would take care of the entire problem. Hey, if you're going to make it so that the general public doesn't even know the games are there, dropping their prices to 200 or 400 MS points shouldn't be a reach. The more games on the service the better, and one man's Mad Tracks is another man's Puzzle Quest. There's no need to eliminate anything and risk alienating consumers and developers alike.

The Problem with Xbox Live

Everything's online today. Once upon a time, it was enough just to be able to whup the butt of the guy playing next to you, but gamers were soon enamored by the prospect of whupping butt cross-country. Being able to take on a real, live human opponent any time and anywhere was very enticing; it still is. So enticing in fact, that modern hardware manufacturers have endeavored to make it a key part of their console strategies. This hardware generation marks the first in which an online component isn't some random add-on peripheral that you can buy if you want. No, this cycle has made it part of the equation for all three systems, and we will most likely never again go back to that world of standing in line to play against someone.

There's a problem though, at least something that I consider to be one, and I'm referring specifically to Xbox Live. While gamers the world over look at upcoming titles and wonder about their online components, this fervor and anticipation doesn't last as long as you'd think. Unless you're looking at a major release, such as Halo 3, Rock Band, or Gears of War; the online lobbies tend to taper off in use mere weeks after a game's release. Come back a year later, and they're practically dead. That's a serious paradox there folks, and it's one that game developers are no doubt taking seriously when they're considering investing the time and money needed to bring a title online. Why incorporate an online component if no one is going to stick with it?

I first noticed this phenomenon back with the original Xbox. Everyone was playing Mech Assault, and full games were not a problem to find. That is, until about five or six months later, when everyone had moved on to the next big release. The same thing happened to me with OutRun 2. People played feverishly for a while, and then poof - they lost interest and started playing something else. About the only original Xbox title with which I had no trouble finding people to play was Project Gotham Racing 2, which most likely had to do with just how incredible it was... and the fact that there wasn't anything really like it online.

This problem hasn't just manifested itself on the Xbox 360, it's grown and multiplied like a virus. Just this past week, I tried to find someone online to play Overlord's survival mode with me. My search came back empty. Pillage? Nothing. Slaughter? Zilch. Curious to see if this was the case with some other titles, I popped in Kameo to see if someone was online. I still have those co-op achievements to get! It was a wasteland as well. I got the same results with Splinter Cell: Double Agent. Where has everyone gone?

No, I know the answer to that one. Just a glimpse of my friends list tells me all I need to know. GTA IV is number one right now, but many are still online with Halo 3 and Gears of War, and... nothing else. I see some sporadic Guitar Hero III and Rock Band in there sometimes, but these three are the only ones consistently played online. And by "online," I'm not just referring to the player being signed in to Live; I mean that an online mode is actually being played.

Xbox Live Arcade titles are even more susceptible to this, as their window to shine is usually about seven days (unless you have a week when MS releases two sure-fire soon-to-be-delisted titles like this one, with Warlords and Suduku). Ever see anyone playing Gauntlet in co-op? How about Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles? The latter is an interesting mention, because I can remember how everyone was dying, DYING to play it in four-player co-op. That frothing demand lasted about two weeks.

Why does this happen? Is it because Xbox 360 gamers are ADD-riddled and have too much cash to spend? Partially, perhaps. I think there are a few other mitigating factors contributing to this quick disinterest in all things online:

• Too Many Games to Play. How many people are still playing Stranglehold online? Not very many, judging by my fruitless attempts to find someone. It's only been eight months since the game was released, and the lobbies are dead most of the time. With a solid online component, I'm sure Midway thought it would ride the top of the Live charts for months, instead of sinking off like a virtual Titanic. Is it the game's fault? Hardly. Who played anything in November that wasn't Halo 3? A lot of titles got their Live walking papers when Bungie's monster hit, and most haven't recovered. Even the mighty Halo itself was staggered by Call of Duty 4, which in turn was toppled by GTA IV. It's almost as if gamers have to embark on a playing frenzy to milk their investment of as much playtime as possible before it's overtaken by the next big thing.
  
• Crappy Online Implementation. The most obvious reason, it alone has the power to kill anyone's desire to play online. No one sticks around for a game that has issues connecting to a lobby, disconnects constantly, or lags like a frame-by-frame examination of the Zepruder film. The XBLA games I mentioned are notorious for this. All the games I mentioned above had horribly laggy online play, some to the point of being unplayable. TMNT was especially heart-breaking, because I had more than enough friends willing to help me kick Shredder's ass, but the Foot Clan apparently hacked into Microsoft's server, thus disabling any attempt on my part to save Splinter. Damn ninjas, always so arrogant with their shurikens and hacking skills...
• Lazy Developers. Ooh, that's right, I said it. Half-ass online play excites no one, yet we continue to see it happen. A game where you're part of a squad loses its luster when said squad always has to be A.I. Even worse are when developers add only a few modes to games that literally scream for full online co-op. GTA IV is a perfect example of this. I wanted to cruise Liberty City with friends and do the missions with them. Impossible, since the campaign is Niko's story, and co-op play would ruin the deep and thought-provoking narrative of one man's journey from one repetitive drop off mission and fetch quest to the next.

Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 used a similarly lame excuse for reducing campaign online co-op from four players to two. "We wanted to enhance the graphics in multi-player," Ubi Soft explained, and by doing so, it crippled the gameplay. If so grand was its desire for software excellence, then could someone explain to me why I never got the achievement for beating the game on Realistic difficulty, even after Ubi Soft patched the game to allow it?

Sierra's upcoming Ghostbusters game did the same thing, adding online play for only "special" missions in a mode separate from the main game. Developer Terminal Reality has stated that it believes that playing co-op would disrupt the narrative of the story. Ok, seeing that the game is being penned by the original writers and features the voices and likenesses of all the Ghostbusters, I can understand that. What I don't understand is why, in this day and age, they simply can't do like the original Rainbow Six: Vegas did. When you played the story by yourself, you got all the juicy narrative and the whole plot. In co-op mode, you didn't, but you got to kill terrorists with three pals.

Anyone who wants to play this new Ghostbusters game (which is probably everyone) is going to play through the story, so why not motivate them to do it both ways? Offer achievements for beating stages alone and in co-op mode, so they have to do it more than once. My friend playing as Egon isn't going to "ruin" the experience for me, because I'll most likely have beaten the game solo already. This is just a poor excuse.

These factors give lower profile releases virtually no online life to speak of. Overshadowed by the major apps and without the hype of the media to generate interest, they fade into obscurity, leaving many gamers unable to enjoy those games that did online right. One simply cannot be expected to play everything released on launch day, and I'm sure that many gamers don't try out certain titles until they've come down in price. Something's gotta give, as they say.

Despite this sad trend, some games manage to avoid this situation simply because of how different they are from everything else. For example, you can always find people playing Uno, and I'm sure there are more than a few titles (Forza 2 and Project Gotham Racing 4 come to mind) that will endure. For the majority of online games however, their time to shine is severely limited, and once they're gone, they're gone for good.

Anyone up for some Phantom Dust?

Welcome Back Dr. Jones

It's finally here. After almost two decades of anticipation, we finally got a new Indiana Jones movie. As a major fan (who isn't?), I've spent years hoping that this would happen, and it was almost surreal to see that it's finally a reality. After it all sank in though, and the initial euphoria wore off, I began to wonder if Phantom Menace Syndrome (PMS) would strike this sequel as well. In my case, I have a clean bill of health, but unfortunately for some people, it seems it has.

For those not in the know, PMS is a condition where the victim spends years, perhaps even decades building up their expectations of what the next installment of their favorite movie series will be like, until they reach a level so unattainable that nothing possibly put to print could ever satisfy them. The syndrome gets its name from the insane amount of anticipation and hype generated for the first new Star Wars film in over two decades, a film which while bad, could never have sated the hunger for that mind-shattering, wet pants-inducing experience the audience had been waiting so long for, no matter how good it was.

See, PMS is vicious in that it attacks the part of the mind that deals with nostalgia and all those warm and fuzzy memories of days gone by. Recent victims of the disease include Transformers and Live Free or Die Hard. Neither lived up to what a lot of people wanted, even though they were both solid films. They say you can't go home again, and this seems to ring most true when it comes to childhood memories.

I do like the term "Phantom Menace Syndrome" though. I like it because its initials are the same as that other condition that induces unwarranted bitchiness and anger. In fact, I like the term so much that I'm going to trademark it.

Phantom Menace Syndrome™

There. Feel free to use it if you like, but please be sure to credit the author!

I guess you could say that I had mixed emotions going into the fourth chapter of the Indiana Jones saga. The build up and electricity this movie has generated is more than enough to make even the most fervent fan a little nervous about its quality. Still, I always wanted another chance to see one of these films on the big screen, so off I went. After finally pushing my way through massive theater lines and sitting through the worst selection of trailers one could imagine being tied to such a major release, I was finally able to partake in Indiana Jones & the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Quite a long title, to be sure, and I was apprehensive that it was symbolic of what this movie was doing: needlessly stretching things out.

I've heard a lot of people talk about how this film wasn't needed, and that the title of The Last Crusade referred to the curtain being drawn on the major film use of the Jones character, as well as the hunt for the Holy Grail (despite Ford, Lucas, and Spielberg saying the opposite for years after the third film was released). They say Kingdom shouldn't have been made, and that the famous trio should have left well enough alone. Needless to say, it got my mind working as I stood in line for my ticket. Almost twenty years had passed since Last Crusade, and as someone who grew up with Indy, would this new movie stomp all over my childhood memories? Was I making a mistake? Would my image of the character be shattered if this film stunk? By then, it was too late. I was already approaching the box office window.
Two hours later I emerged from the theater a relieved man, but let me say this straight off. Kingdom isn't as good as Raiders of the Lost Ark or The Last Crusade, though I'd put it about on the same level as Temple of Doom. Now, some people hate Temple, but that's their loss. I like it a lot and consider it a nice change of pace from the "stop the Nazis from taking yet another supernatural artifact" storyline of the other two films. Kingdom, with its extra terrestrial-centered plot, fits in there nicely, and it serves as a fitting bookend to Indy's film and TV adventures.

And perhaps the term "bookend" is the best way to describe this movie. Sure, it didn't have to be made, but it's nice that it was. I loved the way they tied it in to the other installments, giving it its proper place in the Indy timeline. All the films offer a year at the beginning, but none of them affect the others chronologically. Kingdom changes this by obviously connecting itself into Raiders of the Lost Ark by re-introducing Marion Ravenwood, Indy's old flame and the daughter of his mentor. Abner. However, it goes further into the other parts of the Indy mythos by explaining why Sir Sean Connery and Denholm Elliot aren't present, as well linking itself to the Young Indiana Chronicles by referencing the episode Curse of the Jackal and Indy's adventure with Pancho Villa. It was a nice touch, and it helps bring the old man's life full circle. Furthermore, it sets up Mutt Williams (Shai LeBeouf's character) for future adventures. For example, when Mutt asks Indy how old he was when he rode with Villa, the old archeologist replies "about your age." Very cool.

Characterization aside, many people have expressed disappointment with the acting in the film. In this regard, I'm forced to agree. Ford doesn't seem to be on his best day, which is odd considering how eager he'd always said he was to get another shot at playing Indy. Karen Allen is pretty rusty as well, and LeBeouf is the only one who comes across as generally sincere. The others seem to just be going through the motions most of the time. That's not to say that vintage Indy doesn't rear his head. He does and quite well at that. The warehouse scene is great, albeit too short, and Ford looks and moves incredibly well for a man who's just reached Social Security age.
That has to be my only gripe with the movie, aside from a Tarzan-like vine-swinging display from Williams in Peru. I liked the special effects - a hallmark of the series - and never found the use of CG to be excessive, though I'm sure that there are those out there who cringe every time it's used. For them, I have no pity, as they walked into a LucasFilm product knowing full well what to expect. It seems that they need to touch the hot stove with each and every one of his movies before they realize the burn danger is real. The fact that just about every action and adventure movie today uses CG means that its detractors have a dwindling amount of options for their viewing pleasures. Get used to it folks, CG is here to stay.

I'm thankful to say that PMS didn't afflict me, and I'm feeling fine in regards to the condition of the elderly Dr. Jones. I liked the plot. I liked old Indy. I liked Mutt Williams. Dare I say I'd be eager to see him wear the Fedora and continue in Ford's footsteps? Yes, yes I would.