We’ve known that Grand Theft Auto, San Andreas is coming. This has been public knowledge for a while now, but at long last it looks like Rockstar Games has decided to shed the tiny scrap of political sensitivity it had in this long-standing crime-spree videogame series; the protagonist isn’t white. To be fair, the first two installments of the GTA series featured not a “white guy,” but rather a little dot that ran around in a strictly 2-D environment. The new hero, CJ, suffers from no shortage of melanin:

CJ is expected to be on a quest to clear his personal reputation and protect his street gang in a city that is based upon Los Angeles and San Francisco in the same way that GTA3’s Liberty City was based on Chicago and New York City. For a long time it has been perfectly acceptable for video games to revolve around soldiers, plumbers, and italian mafiosos. Finally we get a video game about a black gang member. That isn’t why I’m going to buy the game; I will be getting this due to the great many hours of enjoyment I’ve gotten from GTA2, GTA3, and GTA Vice City. I just wish we had a little more info about changes in the game engine itself… I look forward to riding a BMX around with my boxers showing, though.

I don’t know how this kind of thing happens. It makes absolutely no sense to me. I mean, Windows Update just operates through a minimal-nonsense web interface. So Apple made a little GUI widget for their product updates. Fine. What what on Earth would cause the creation of this atrocity?

Has the past twenty years of steadily losing market share and relevance amongst all but the most delusional sub-niche of computer users driven the Mac community this far?

That being said, thank you, Crazy Apple Rumors, for showing us that while Apple has been bungling the PR aspect of recent security problems in ways that make Microsoft look like respectable members of the business community, somebody is out there willing to remind us that Mac OSX 10.3.4 still provides Stickies that are far less sticky than in previous releases.

I stand atop a hill, nay a mountain of my fallen enemies. Monsters, demons, and corrupt soldiers all fear me. Cute little muchroom-people run in terror at my presence, for I have defeated La Pucelle Tactics. I picked it up a couple weeks ago and have been putting in a couple hours a night ever since. Ok, so I put in over fifty hours. It’s a fun game. Having gone through the plotline, rescued those who needed rescuing, smited those in need of smiting, and brought my wrath and fury down upon those who dared to stand against me, I have the following bits of advice for any who care to listen:

1. Pay no mind to the character descriptions on the official website. They’re wrong. They’re worse than wrong, they’re misleading.
2. Your physical combat abilites are really really really easy to develop. You don’t have to focus on them when improving your characters.
3. Your magical abilities are really not easy to develop. It may seem easier to use a physical attack and do a lot of damage now, but if you want to be able to use AoE elemental magic later in the game, you need to work on it and build up your skills.
4. You will want those AoE elemental magic skills later in the game.
5. Don’t count on having one or two powerful characters. There are plot points that remove some characters from play for several fights at a time. Diversify and be comfortable with your whole squad.
6. If you have purified a monster into joining your team, then spend some quality time levelling it up, don’t get too attached. Eventually that Zombie you recruited on the first map just isn’t going to be able to keep up anymore.
7. Make sure you have two people that can cast healing magic.
8. Learn how to merge equipment at the Rosenqueen shop. It’s a good way to reduce the number of accidentally-recruited monsters on your list and get cool stuff.
9. You don’t need to get more than two or three levels into the Cave of Trials before you’re perfectly capable of defeating the final boss.
10. You also don’t need to go to the Dark World.
11. Eclair is better than Prier.
12. Yes, Prier is in Disgaea too. This story takes place before Disgaea in the same setting.

That’s about all there is to it that doesn’t give anything away. I see a lot of potential in this subgenre of strategy game. Final Fantasy Tactics was one of my all-time favorite games, and this one was greatly enjoyable as well. As soon as I can justify to myself spending more money on another PS2 game I’m going to have to go pick up Disgaea, the sequel to La Pucelle Tactics. Yes, Disgaea was released in the US first, but that’s just the way things go sometimes. Go pick up a copy of yourself. You should get at least 50 hours of fun out of it, which is under a dollar per hour of entertainment. I suspect it’s pretty re-playable too, but the only way to know is to pick it up again. I’ll give it a whack after I’m prepped up for Friday’s D&D game.