I watched the season premiere to Buffy the Vampire Slayer last night, and I have to say I’m glad they’re starting to get back to their roots - good humor, good dialogue, good enemies. I hope they can keep it up. If so, we’re in for a great season.

I started playing Virtua Fighter 4 last night and discovered it’s way more complicated than I thought it would be. I’m used to more button-masher style controls in a fighting game (a la DOA3) so when I started playing VF4 I sort of assumed you could play that way.

Not so.

There are actually very complicated combos that you can execute with the characters in this game. The thing about doing that is that you have to sort of queue up a chain of moves for your character to perform. For example, in DOA3, when I do the sequence “Punch, Kick, Punch” on the controller, the character executes the moves “Punch, Kick, Punch” as I push the buttons. If I try to push “Kick” while the “Punch” is still executing, it ignores the “Kick” command. In VF4, if you push “Punch, Kick, Punch,” it acts more like a move queue. If I push “Kick” while the character is punching, that kick command will actually modify the way the current punch is being executed (maybe the character will do some fancy flip or something in that case). If I push four or five buttons in rapid succession, the character will combine several fancy moves and execute a chain of commands that will probably last a couple of seconds after I’ve finished pressing buttons.

It’s interesting, but it’s harder than I thought it would be. I suppose that’s kind of good; it requires that I expand my abilities as a gamer. But it’s not something you can just casually sit down and play with. You have to train on it. Pretty intense.

I found this really cool free DJ software called CD Scratch. It provides two virtual turntables on your screen that you can use to mix and “scratch” on CDs via your computer. Just slip in a CD and away you go. It will let you play two different tracks from the same CD and mix them, or, if you have two CD drives, play two different tracks from two different CDs and mix those. Loads of fun, waiting to happen. And it’s free! Who could ask for anything more?