Happy Thursday everyone!

For a lot of people, today is the last day of work before the long Easter Week-end, and that includes most of the Northern Geekcast staff (i.e. everyone but me) so this week-end’s podcast will be recorded on the following week-end.

Alright, so now that we’ve gotten the bad news out of the way,  how about something positive? (No, not the comic – but hey – you can check that out too.)

First up, I’d like to direct your attention to the reviews section of the site where you’ll be able to find our latest review (Resident Evil 5) once again provided to us by our good friend Neelix. We have diverging opinions when it comes to the control scheme, but none-the-less, it remains a great review; in fact, I’d say it was his best one yet.

In other Northern Geeks related news, I’ve gone and added a “First” and “Last” tag to the navigation bar so that they’ll be visible no matter what strip you happen to be looking at. The only time “Last” will not be shown is if you happen to be on the latest strip. At the moment, the “First” tag still appears when viewing the first strip, which may be a bit confusing. I’m still trying to figure out how to fix that. If you happen to be familiar with how Comicpress works, I’d appreciate any help I could get, seeing as I’m not all that great with PHP. >.>

So for those interested in what I’ve been up to gaming-wise, I just recently sat down and beat Shadow of the Colossus. I had started playing it a few years back, but never completed it. A few podcasts ago, Bryan and I had a discussion regarding both SotC and Ico, and quickly realized that these games were worth debating; of course, I wouldn’t be able to do so not having beaten SotC. So as soon as Bryan gets around to beating Ico, we’ll be all set for the big face-off (which I will win, because Ico is the better game and I am the better debater.) With that said, I also happen to believe SotC is a great game, which is why a little part of me died inside when I found out that they were making it into a movie. (T_T)

On a brighter note, if you were a fan of Valkyria Chronicles – which you should all be – I’d highly recommend that you check out the first episode of the new anime series, which just so happens to be posted here (with English subtitles) on Kotaku. I think it looks promising. The score remains faithful to the game, and I love the way they’ve chosen to flesh out certain parts of the story. With the new anime series forthcoming, and the DLC coming out on April 16th, I have a feeling I might just have to swing by Gallia for another visit sometime real soon.

So you might have noticed while visiting the site this morning (although probably not, because it’s Sunday – Easter Sunday at that – and almost no one ever comes here on Sundays) that the Forums have disappeared. Well, there’s a good reason for that: I took them down.

I didn’t find there was much interest in the forums; most of the posts were provided by me and by spambots. In fact, I woke up this morning to find that a good dozen possible spammers had joined. Sometimes it would be easy to tell who the spammers were; they would have names like CialisOnlineWeekEndSpecial or AdobePhotoshop4Sale. Sometimes, however, they would have names like kievorsopolous or vlakdivierge, so I would never be quite sure whether I was kicking a spammer or simply some Scandinavian fellow who just so happened to have a name I’ve never heard before. In the end, I’d always tell myself that, if kiev or vlak were real people, and had actual interest in joining the forums, they would  have posted a quick “hello world” message in the intro section.

With that said, I’m still very much interested in forming a NG community, which is why I’m kicking around the idea of allowing comments. The reason I chose to go the forum route originally was because I didn’t want any spam or junk on the main page. By entering the forums it was like saying “This is a place you can come and share your thoughts on things, but understand that this is a DMZ, and you are entering in here by your own free will.” whereas the main page should be somewhere safe, where anyone should be able to venture without having to worry about what they’ll see or read – other than my sporadic nonsense, of course.

But forums require that little extra bit of effort: you have to load the forum page, create a login and sign in, and only then can you say what’s on your mind. With comments, it can be as easy as writing down what’s on the top of your head, then and there. Sometimes that’s all people want.

So let’s try that out. I’ll leave the comments section open for about a week to test the waters. Let me know what you think. Do you like the idea of letting people post comments? Do you think it’s a bad idea? Have I doomed us all by opening up the floodgates? Let’s find out!