Grinding Down on pause while I hide from furry cosplayers at MegaCon 2012

Tomorrow, Tara and I leave behind the cold, gray skies of Pennsylvania for hopefully something warmer in Florida. We’ll be at MegaCon 2012 from this upcoming Friday through Sunday, selling comics, being shy, and staring at cosplayers. You can find us at table RED 9, wherever that is. Just look for a fat bearded man and a small, attractive redhead–that’s us.

Let me give a quick rundown of what we’ll be shilling. Tara reprinted her girl-falls-into-a-puddle minicomic Puddles, has a new mini based on another song by Leema Mountain, has copies of Unite and Take Over, and some awesome prints based on those popular Game of Thrones peeps; you can see some previews here. On the other hand, I will be selling copies of my 31 Bad Comics challenges, the first issue of a new story called The Lost Seafarer, and some Supertown things. Also got some fancy postcards for All of Westeros to give out. You want more deets? Go here.

What does all this have to do with videogames and Grinding Down? Well, uh. I won’t have time to blog. I won’t have time to write up more delicious words about 100%ing Saints Row: The Third or playing the same exact character in Skyrim on the Xbox 360 and Steam or my early thoughts on the recently acquired Super Mario 3D Land. I won’t be able to do Achievements of the Week this time around. It’ll just have to wait for my grand return. Hope that’s okay.

But let’s play a game while I’m away. Wait. ::puts on Jigsaw voice:: I WANT TO PLAY A GAME WITH YOU. AND THAT GAME IS CALLED:

GUESS THE NUMBER OF STREETPASS TAGS I’LL GET AT MEGACON 2012!

Catchy, huh? See, MegaCon is looking to be a pretty popular convention, and where there’s a popular convention, there’s the chance to score a good number of StreetPass tags for my Nintendo 3DS. For comparison, I got 51 tags back in April 2011 at MoCCA, but that was also early into the system’s life; with the price drop and array of good games, I feel like the chance of someone else having a 3DS is much higher now.

Whoever comes close to the exact number without going over will win a prize. What’s the prize? Geez, really? You have to ask? Okay, okay. The prize is that you can pick a topic–any topic you want though try not to creep me out–and I’ll write about it. Look, I’m not made of money. Take it or leave it.

Place your bets below, and I’ll see y’all when I return!

The Daedalus is simply no match for the leader of The Saints

I continue to play clean-up in Saints Row: The Third, incremental bit by incremental bit, and since I will be away from the ol’ Xbox 360 for a few days I figured I’d put some quality time into Steelport last night.

Just crossed the twenty-six hour mark, according to my save file, and there’s still plenty to do in terms of side activities and challenges. But I am crossing items off my imaginary to-do list, which has all been made ten times easier thanks to completely leveling up my transgendered hero and unlocking perks wherein he/she has unlimited ammo, can sprint forever, and can’t take damage. Here, proof of my doings:

Tune In, Drop Off (20G): Completed all instances of Trafficking.

Life of the Party (20G): 100% of Collectibles found. Drugs, Sex, Cash, and Celebrity… What else is there?

Love/Hate Relationship (10G): Taunted/Complimented 50 gang members, are you a fighter or a lover?

Mr. Fury Would Be Proud (30G): Completed Act 3 in one way.

Again, I censored that last Achievement so as not to spoil y’all on what actually happens. Unless the Achievement’s very name is spoilery, but I can’t tell. No idea who this Mr. Fury is and how he relates to the Saints Row franchise, but maybe I just haven’t been paying attention or something. However, as an editor and a lover of words and reading and interpreting things to no end, I find it interesting that the Gangstas…In Space! ending, wherein you save your friend’s life over hunting down the main villain, uses the phrase “in another way,” implying that the true and main way to complete the game is by letting your friend die and taking out he who threatened all you stood for. I guess I did them out of order. Oh well.

However, whenever I have a choice to save someone’s life in a videogame, I save them. Or try as much as possible. In Chrono Trigger, I did not challenge Magus to another duel, letting him join my party. In Dragon Age: Origins, I rescued Sten from his cage, even if I ended up never using him combat. In Mass Effect, I made my choices and saved who I could. In Deus Ex: Human Revolution, I tried and tried and tried to save a certain someone, but kept failing due to my lack of skills and ammo from a stealth-focused playthrough, but I promised myself that I will go back and try again, because she’s worth saving. But yeah, I like saving people. Stick close to me, and you’ll probably be okay.

And so it was not to my liking to complete Saints Row: The Third this way, but it had to happen. I was curious what kind of effect it would have, and I have to say that it was more fun storming a crazy battleship in the sky then going to Mars and filming a faux movie. Unfortunately, that fun came at a cost. There’s now one less homie to phone in during my times of trouble.

You can relax for a bit, Steelport. Don’t have to worry about some crazy green-haired, silver-skinned woman-man going on a shooting spree right now. But I’ll be back soon, I promise.