Today's comic is the unadulterated, uncut version of our drug of choice. Usually, this product is chopped up with what we in the industry call "the set-up," which is roughly analogous to baking soda. What I'm saying is that shit be pure today, and we're gonna trust that you can handle it. But seriously, if the authorities catch you with it, we don't know each other.

I never got into World of Warcraft, despite my addiction to the first three real-time strategy games. I think the reason why is that I didn't know anybody else who was playing the game, and games like that are really meant to be a communal experience. Want to run a raid on some Ice Demons? You can't go it alone. Trying to level up your min/maxing? I don't know what that means, but you'll need at least five people. Got an itch to do a third thing that sounds really cool? Best of luck, Captain Solo.

So, even though I really wanted to explore the world in which the craft of war was being executed, I wasn't able to do it in a way that felt fun. So I returned to the console I loved so dearly and realized that my RPG of choice was actually Call of Duty (a grim scenario, to be sure), and later would become Battlefield.

The silliness of calling an FPS an RPG (I mean, those letters have to mean things, right?) is apparent, but the exact experience I was craving just wasn't readily accessible to me at any level of effort I was prepared to expend. So I got my fix on the good-enough-stuff.

Now, it looks like I've finally got a game that friends of mine are playing and is the real, honest-to-goodness open-world game that I've been dying to get to play for years; what I'm getting at is that Red Dead Redemption has the potential to be the reason none of my clients hear from me for the next week or so.

While the promise of this kind of multi-player experience is what sold me on the game, I've found myself really enjoying the immersive environments. I also admire how committed Rockstar was to creating a complete spaghetti Western experience. With a little luck, their next open-world(s) franchise will revolve around "Firefly."

A significant speed-bump; the multi-player appears to have some memory issues. Character models would pop in and out of existence, which is particularly annoying when you're trying to shoot them in the face. I hope this will be sorted out shortly.