ODD: As you may have noticed, we’ve made some changes to the site. For one, The Toybox is gone as a menu item. RK and I were just having too much difficulty keeping up with it; however, fear not, for we have other plans in store (particularly for October…) RK also whipped up that new menu image next to Poe’s Point–an “Alien Demon” from the old Blackstar toy line from the 1980s (more on that in a few weeks).

END: As of last week, I’ve got a brand-new home PC. It’s a Dell 530s, with a 22″ widescreen monitor. It’s amazing how much more defined and vibrant PGPoA is when your monitor isn’t six years old. Any recommendations for PC games? I’m thinking I might try Diablo III when it hits. I was addicted to the original Diablo for about three months straight, from June through August 1997. Then I was never able to play it again…

ODD: Speaking of videogames, I’ve been more interested in them as of late than I have been since, well, since Halo 3 came out, I suppose. I just finished playing Lego Star Wars: Original Trilogy, which was so entertaining it’s got my psyched up for Lego Batman, which has the potential to be the first really good Batman videogame since ever–the Caped Crusader’s record in videogames has been terrible (as it has for most DC superheroes, come to think of it).

On the other hand, earlier this month Eidos Interactive revealed Batman: Arkham Asylum, which also looks like it could be good. Here’s the quote from the article in Game Informer that gives me the most hope:

So the team drew up a list of the core elements of what they’ve always wanted from a Batman videogame: martial arts expertise, detective smarts, the ability to move through the shadows like no one else, and the freedom to go wherever his grapple gun allows.

About damned time. Now here’s hoping the game is good…it’s going to have an over-the-shoulder view, like Gears of War, and like GoW it runs on the Unreal 3 engine. I’m having some difficulty envisioning how the melee combat will work under this perspective, but we’ll see.

I also played the demo for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed from Xbox Live Arcade, and I have to say, that one’s going to be hard to resist. If you ever wanted to rip huge metal objects out of the wall and wing them at stormtroopers, this is your game.

END: With forty comments and climbing, it looks like the latest round of Everybody Into the Pool may be the most successful yet. This time, someone may even have picked the day the case will arrive (in the last two contests, the winner was the person whose date was closest, not the actual day).