How do you say good-bye to someone who has been an integral part of Avault since before you can remember? You could do a sappy retrospective of their body of work, add an orchestral soundtrack, and bring a tear to the eye of everyone reading. You could write a brief farewell and announcement of their departure for their fans. Or you could say nothing and quietly hope that no one notices the change in the masthead.

But what if the body of their work can be summed up with an acronym and a word? “DRM bad!” What if they have no fans and only adversaries? What if the sudden rantless silence is too much to go unnoticed? Yes, the rumors are true. Doug Lombardi’s Valve has swooped in and captured the one and only (thank the gods) Tsar Alaric Teplitsky.

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You’re midway through an awesome RPG, and you’re working your way through that quest where you find the thing, and kill the dude that will give you the perks to take on the big bad. You know the one I’m talking about. And suddenly, out of nowhere, you fall through a staircase, or get trapped behind a table, or actually find yourself below the map. You try to exit and reload, but something’s gone horribly wrong. Depending on how diligent you are at saving, and how the game is designed, you may have only lost a few minutes, a few hours, or weeks of work! And sometimes, when you go back and retry, the glitch occurs again, and again, and again!

We’ve all been there! Usually it’s just an irritating annoyance, but sometimes it’s catastrophic and prevents a GREAT game from achieving what it was designed to. Depending on the severity, sometimes I’ll just walk away from a particular title completely. It’s just not fun if I can’t complete Quest X, so I move on to the next big RPG. I’m not talking about floating heads, Donkey Women, or paint brushes that just hover in midair. The bugs I refer to are the ones that have the potential to completely destroy the experience until patched.

While working on my review this week (for a game you’ll get to read about Friday), I sadly had just such an experience. This time I found a work around and was able to continue, but while I frantically sought a solution, I was reminded of a similar experience I had long ago in Oblivion, and felt like commiserating. Please share your worst “bug” experiences below, and what you think about large games that get shipped with these time bombs lurking within.

Dear Santa,

This year I’m not asking for world peace or a 36-hour day. I’ve actually set my sights a little higher this time, and while I know I’m asking for a lot, I think you’re the only one who can grant this particular Christmas wish. I would like an Xbox 360 that lasts more than 18 months.

I know, I know. Impossible, you say. There isn’t an Xbox 360 on the planet that can survive the abuses I put it through. Marathon sessions of Dragon Age, Halo, Fallout and Borderlands always seem to take their toll, and usually right after the warranty runs out. I really thought that I was being smart last year when I bought the extended Target warranty. But you see, you need to have your original receipt, and after 18 months of sitting in my wallet, you can’t read it, and Target refuses to honor the barely legible agreement. I even obtained a copy of the transaction from my bank, but without that code, I’m done for (and so is my Xbox).

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Yesterday, the Tennessean reported that three-year-old Cheyenne Alexis McKeehan shot herself in the abdomen with the family’s handgun in their Wilson County home. Sheriff Terry Ashe said the girl’s stepfather had taken out his gun to try to frighten off dogs that had been hanging around the home, and then put said loaded gun on a table in the living room. Cheyenne had been playing a Wii game with a controller shaped like a gun that looked very similar to the real handgun. The apparently unattended toddler then pulled the gun off of the table and it went off, killing the three year-old. No charges have yet been filed.

Sadly, what do most people remember about the above story? That a three year-old was playing video games and died. Now normally I just report the news around these parts and keep most of my two cents to myself, but this time, I have to scream. Why did the reporter feel the need to even mention that the girl was playing a video game? What if she’d mistaken it for a water gun? What if she’d just been curious? She was three years old!!! You don’t leave a three year-old alone with a butter knife or an actual glass, who in the world is moronic enough to leave one alone with a loaded gun?

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As 2008 came to a close, I appeared as a guest on the Avault Podcast, and found myself posed with a difficult question to answer. “What was your favorite game of the year?” I say difficult, because I didn’t have a favorite. I quickly thought of which game had spent the most time in my 360’s DVD drive and blurted out Supreme Commander. Were there other games that were better? Sure, but my criteria for rating a game are a little different than most. For me, a game has to have staying power, and a Game of the Year must be one that lingers not only in the memory, but also on my playlist. Sadly, 2008 didn’t have such a champion for me, and 2009 looked like it might end the same…until very recently.

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People often say that kids “don’t come with instructions”, and while I could argue that point (my first two are Navy brats and I was presented with a 800+ page manual when the first was born, and even my youngest came equipped with a stack of booklets), I’m willing to concede that becoming a parent is a lot like getting hired for a job for which we have little formal training. So what do you do? Well, most of us spend the first couple of years doing everything in our power just to keep them alive. Don’t believe me? You’ve probably never thought about it much, but think of all those vaccinations, the degree to which you’ve either baby-proofed your home or the numerous times that you’ve leapt across the family room to retrieve that older child’s too small toy from your toddler’s clutches, the “Don’t talk to strangers” talks, and the all-time favorite “Don’t do drugs”.

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For all of our regular podcast listeners, and those that aren’t (might want to look into that – you’re missing out on some great entertainment, information, oh and yeah FREE GAMES) Turks, our Lead Podcaster extraordinaire, has had a new addition. No, it’s not an advance copy of Fallout New Vegas. It’s a baby girl.

Madison was born at 3:39pm on Thursday April 16th. She weighed 8lbs 13oz, is 21 inches long, and both mom and baby are doing awesome!!! Reports indicate that she’s not ready to Wii, yet, but Turks is already looking into teaching the future gamer how to operate the much less vigorous DS.

Previously on Avault…

But what about the forums? Enter Kyle and the Andrews. Andrew Waterman is our brilliant software engineer, and Andrew Slane our fabulous (pronounced with the brightest SF accent you can muster) graphical designer. Slane (we refer to all Andrews by their last name here – there’s just too darn many of them) is actually the one responsible for our new “BuyIt” etc. icons. Whenever we need to add some pretty to the site – Slane’s our man. Kyle (Kyleicious to you 360 bubbas) completely revamped everything with his own hands. We relaunched the forums…and…we relaunched them again.

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Previously on Avault…

Backups are cool – when they work. Initially we thought that the fix would be simple – just boot up the backup. Unfortunately there wasn’t one. It hadn’t done its thing. There was no record of what once had been the Adrenaline Vault – or was there?

Deep in the jungles of darkest Brazil (okay, maybe in the suburbs, but work with me here) lived that well-known explorer of computer servers and databases – Saulo Benigno! What? You’ve never heard of Saulo? Then you’ve never been here. Saulo is the man behind the curtain, and fortunately for everyone concerned – a pack rat. Back in September, he’d been tweaking around in preparation for the new site design, and made a “just in case” backup. When the tweaking was done, a copy of the entire Vault was saved to his hard drive. So when the drums started to beat, and the scramble commenced, a hero emerged.

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If you’re of a certain age (or at least have cable and can get Sleuth), then that phrase conjures up none other than the infamous A-Team. I was thinking about that last month while we were scrambling to restore Avault and make it “better, stronger, faster” than before.

We have an incredible team here at the Adrenaline Vault, and sadly, most of them go unnoticed as they creep around behind the scenes keeping things running. How important this team is became very evident a few weeks ago.

For those of you new here, let’s just say that Avault was on the brink of total annihilation! Think I’m exaggerating or exercising the heck out of my poetic license? Nope, not in the slightest. I’m NOT a tech monkey (ask any of my professors), so in layman’s terms…

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Wow! 2008 is already more than half over, and I still haven’t even put a dent into my “to do” list. Oh well, there’s always 2009. It took me by surprise when I was asked what the best games so far this year were because I’m still waiting for some of my favs to release. In the mean time, yes, I’ve been playing games, but so far, 2008 isn’t matching up to the year we had in 2007.

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It was an ordinary day. I kissed my hubbie good-bye, shipped my youngest off to school, started my eldest on her Algebra and Biology lessons, and then began my commute to work. I stopped off for coffee in the kitchen, and then dashed into the office (5 feet away) to check on my mail and get my work in order for the day. My assignment for the day: spend 8 hours with my Xbox and put together a review for the site. I put in the new disk, and was greeted with GRIIIND…WHIIIIR…followed by what I’ve been told is the “red ring of death.”

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First, before the egg nog goes to my head, I’d like to congratulate our chief editor, David Laprad, on his upcoming wedding this month. And ask the question, who gets married over Christmas? He may think that he’s going to save on the gift giving, but as the only woman on staff, I must warn him and any of you that might consider it, you can’t count something as both a Christmas and an anniversary gift. She’ll smile, and “say” it’s okay, but she’ll never admit it to her mother.

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Unless you live in a cave (in which case you probably don’t have Internet and can’t read this anyway), you’ve heard by now that the WGA is on strike and your favorite television shows might run out of material by Christmas.  Now, I’m all for turning off the tube and talking to your family, but let’s be practical here.  The prime time television schedule is set up the way it is for a reason.
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I thought I’d start off this puppy by telling you a bit about myself and how I ended up here.  As you probably read in my bio (hopefully, you skipped right over my pic), I’m a grad student in Information Technology Management.  Basically, that long identifier just means I’m a tech geek that hopes to land a real job when I grow up.  Last spring, while studying for exams, I came across a link. (You know, the ones they put in the back of textbooks that say things like, “Would you like to know more?”)  I followed the link due to my obsessive nature to know everything I can about a topic so as to avoid any essay surprises on exam day, and found my way to Avault.  They just happened to be looking for new reviewers that day.

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