Oh, Jacky-boy. Can’t say I missed you. I thought the gaming community had heard the last of Jack Thompson. Afterall, he hadn’t made a peep since he got his jimmies rustled by a Half Life 2 mod in March last year. He even, surprisingly, kept quiet during the tragic Aurora Theater Shooting. But I guess he finally got bored of just yelling at kids to get off his lawn and decided to get in on the Conneticut Shooting hype train.

For those of you who haven’t been keeping up with the news, earlier this week a man killed twenty-six people, including twenty children. This is a horrible tragedy and while there’s a lot of things I could say about the shooting and the reaction to it, I think it’s best I don’t say much about it. I’m keeping the focus on Jack Sparrow here. If you don’t know who Jack is (exposition, exposition, exposition!), he is a former lawyer and the most well-known crusader against video games. Not too long after the shooting, Jack-O-Lantern pulled his disgusting signature move of blaming tragedy on video games. He emailed Joystiq stating that “Blood is on YOUR hands”. I’m not surprised by this. He’s always pulling stunts like this. It’s about time we just give him his medicine and put him in a home.

He’s like this, except not as charming.

Jack Thompson is undeniably an attention whore and a troll. If you look at Jack Bauer’s track record, you’ll agree. There’s no way this is genuine. I refuse to believe that he honestly thinks that video games are to blame. The things that come out of this man’s mouth aren’t worth the gross old people candies he probably gives out on Halloween. Remember when I called him a former lawyer? The man was disbarred. Disbarred. That’s like a note saying “Yeah, don’t listen to this guy” signed by the lawyer factory. This needs to be the last time we let Jack and Daxter get any publicity. If anyone reading this writes on a video game website and is contacted by Jack Thompson, delete the email and do not report on it. This man’s purpose is to get in our faces and try to make us mad. He’s not worth it at all. Yes, we’ve had a lot of laughs making fun of him, but enough is enough. Let’s put Jack back in the box.

It’s been a while since the first time I’ve heard of Naughty Dog’s PS3 exclusive, The Last of Us. If you’ve read some of my earlier stuff then you already know that I’m a huge zombie fan. I’m probably the only person in the world who says “Oh great, another zombie game/movie/comic” unironically. Come to think of it, I’m the only one who does a lot of things unironically. But anyway, I was a little surprised when I saw the gameplay trailer and seemed to lose all interest in the game. Let me show you:

I’m not sure why I felt so uninterested about the game. Maybe it’s the style the game is. It reminds me of the first Uncharted game, where it has a big and beautiful environment, yet a single  linear path to traverse it. It just seems like I would end up spending a lot of time trying to find where I’m supposed to go. This was only reinforced by the way that the gameplay demo is so scripted. It was as if I were watching a cutscene trailer, not footage of someone playing. It was as if the game wasn’t even being played by a human. But I suppose after a 169-hour energy drink and candy fueled workweek, the part of the programmer that makes him a person has died a long time ago. But I digress.

The story trailer from the Spike VGAs got me a little bit more excited. Just a little bit, though. Originally, it appeared that it was just the two main characters trying to make it through the world months if not years after the breakdown of society has disintegrated into “shoot first, don’t give a crap about asking questions later”. But now it seems that there are some elements of  a post apocalyptic community. This reminds me of The Walking Dead‘s Woodbury. Oh, and for a game that’s called “The Last of Us”, there seems to be a lot of people running around. Will someone please tell Naughty Dog that Steve from Marketing needs to be let go? Anyway, this new information on the story is kind of cool, but for some reason I just can’t get into this game. Maybe it’s my instincts warning me that beyond all logic this game is going to suck. Don’t quote me on that, though.

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Escape is not an option? I have a feeling child actors hear that a lot.

Like a lot of people, I’m a big fan of sitcoms. If you’re a sitcom fan, you’ve probably noticed that it’s a rare treat to find one that isn’t either “adventures of a marginally quirky girl” or “it’s like Sex in the City, except we don’t know we’re not funny”. One of the current shows I actually like is Suburgatory. The show is about a teenage girl named Tessa who moves from New York City to a snobbish and prissy suburb. It’s not the best, but it’s worth checking out if you’re flipping channels. I actually had a good amount of respect for the show. Tessa is a great character (a great character who is also my age, which is rare). It even explores the concept of a neglectful mother, which most pieces not produced by an obnoxiously self-righteous black man seem afraid to do. But last week’s episode sure tried its hardest to make me forget all of that.

Last week’s episode has a plot for Tessa, her friend and her dad. Her friend just broke up with her boyfriend and her dad was trying to convince his old friends from the city that he hadn’t gone soft. And what was our hero Tessa’s story for the episode. She got a tablet. That’s about it. It was a Microsoft Surface. The episode is filled with Tessa describing her experience with the tablet as if it was a healthy, human relationship. Although, the name is never said, it’s pretty clear that Microsoft paid some big bucks for this episode. To give some context, I’ll explain a little bit more about Tessa’s character. She’s smart and level-headed. As long as I’ve watched the show, she’s never even showed a sign of being a geek. Out of all the characters, she would be the least likely to become obsessed with material objects. So it makes no sense for her to talk about the tablet so much. It isn’t even the old recycled “character gets obsessed with new gadget then learns the value of moderation” plot. Tessa using the Surface doesn’t cause conflict or advance the plot. It’s just there. You could literally go back and edit the episode, doing minimal edits to replace her tablet with a boyfriend, and the story would make much more sense without changing anything major.

You’re at the club and this guy gropes your girlfriend. WHAT DO YOU DO?

I really hope that this doesn’t start a trend. We don’t need an episode of The Walking Dead where Glenn risk his life trying to raid an Apple store. I don’t want to see an episode of 30 Rock with 12 minutes of Tracy playing his Xbox. It shouldn’t become a thing where you can literally run a clip of a TV show as a commercial without a hint of irony. I don’t know if it was the writers, or the producers or ABC who let this happen. But whoever gave the greenlight to let Microsoft write an episode needs to be strapped into a chair and forced to watch Wedding Peach until they forever know what bad TV looks like (which should take all of about ten minutes. It is Wedding Peach after all).

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The Late Night Gamer is an independent gaming blog sponsored by Chunky Puffs, Capsule Corp. and Aperture Science. Follow it on Tumblr!