On The Rain-Slick Precipice of Pyro's and Drafts

Wow. A while ago, Penny Arcade came with a game of their own. An episodic RPG with the same style and humor of their comic. Seeing as how the demo was awesome (me and my friends had a blast), I bought the full game today on XBL Arcade. The story is silly enough, gameplay is solid and I want more.

After a giant Fruit Fucker uses your house as a stepping stone, placing your all of your house on the same horizontal plane, you want revenge. You join Tycho and Gabe, who conviently pass by as they are chasing the robot, to solve the mystery behind the mechanic monstrosity. Once you get past the suburbs you live in, it's obvious that the guys from PA made quite the effort to get a good story going. With every minute you play, the plot thickens. Using Paper Mario/Super Mario RPG style of combat, even that is fun. This coming from someone that hates Final Fantasy because of the combat system (Seriously, If I ever have trouble sleeping...).

But... There are 2 things that I dislike. Near the end, it is unclear where you need to go to get the items to upgrade your weapons. The game isn't that big, so it's not that hard to turn it upside down, but still. And the ending credits.
I don't dislike credits, just the ones that I cannot skip. Anyhow, good game, go get it.


Also, The Team Fortress 2 Pyro Achievements are in. After playing for 8 hours straight yesterday, I finally have all the unlockables, the flaregun, backburner and Axtinguisher, unlocked at 10, 16 and 22 achievements respectively. Flaregun is awesome in maps without water, just to screw with your long range enemies. Backburner is fine in close combat, but it sucks if a Soldier/Demoman gets the jump on you and the Axtinguisher is epic, exept against Pyro's. Flame retardant suits don't allow them to burn very well. Seeing as the Axtinguisher deals 50% damage against non-burning and crits 100% on burning enemies, that's a bit of a problem. On the other hand, it looks so epic... Barbed wire on axes looks so evil.

Me and my gaming group, with which I play Magic:The Gathering, are trying something new to balance out the differences in funds, cards etc. We draft.
It's supposed to be a bit more desperate than others, just make packs of cards, with the same consistency as boosters, or use actual boosters. Then draft and play for ante's. But: We use 2 boosters to make a 40 card deck, not 3. So far it's lots of fun.