Half Life 2 Special EP21:Time, Dr. Freeman?
Link (YouTube) |
And so we come to the end of Half-Life 2. I know I joke about this show being a podcast with a quasi-related video feed. That might be particularly true here. This series has been fun. We’ll probably just roll on into the episodes as time allows, although the plan now is to cover Mass Effect 3.
Annotated:
Continue reading 〉〉 “Half Life 2 Special EP21:Time, Dr. Freeman?”
Half Life 2 Special EP20:
The Kinaesthetic Pastiche Buffet
Link (YouTube) |
Enjoy this latest installment of Spoiler Warning, now with 50% more snobby art-game theory! (I kid. Sort of. I love me some snobby art-game theory.)
I make reference to Gordon Frohman near the end of the episode. If that reference went right by you, then check out Concerned, a Half-Life 2 fan comic. I consider it akin to my own comic. It was a finite series by design, based on screenshots, where a lot of the humor was derived from subverting a story already understood by the audience. Both series start out a little wobbly, but get to be really funny once they have the concept nailed down. Both are a good way to blow a couple of hours. They also ran at about the same time.
Tomorrow we hit the thrilling conclusion to this series. Are you excited? I’m excited.
Star Wars the Old Republic:The Game is at the Bottom
Remember back when Star Wars the Old Republic was still new, and there was a bit of a debate about whether it was The New Awesome, or a poor execution of a fundamentally flawed design? Often there were comparisons drawn between SWTOR and Guild Wars 2, which was interesting since the latter game wasn’t (and still isn’t) yet released. Now that I’ve played both games, I think I get why.
On Twitter, I took SWTOR to task for not having a mouselook-toggle. If you want to look around, you have to hold either mouse button while you move the mouse. There is no setting or option that will let you click to switch between “looking around” mode and “clicking on stuff” mode. Some people thought I was being petty for complaining about this, but it’s an important aspect of the game and it goes way beyond “my hand gets tired holding the button down all the time”. By making the interface default to a mouse-pointer mode, the game is telling you that the normal interaction is to click buttons and menus. This isn’t just about how the game plays, but about what kind of game you’re playing in the first place. Or to put it more accurately, it tells you how the designers intended for you to interact with the game.
Continue reading 〉〉 “Star Wars the Old Republic:The Game is at the Bottom”
Spoiler Warning Hangout: Guild Wars 2 Edition – Ended!
In case you missed it, Guild Wars 2’s final beta weekend started Friday. So we figured, why not let you all in on the magic as Josh drives everyone else who actually shows up completely insane by talking about Guild Wars while playing Guild Wars? Everyone wins!
See it here:
http://www.livestream.com/chocolatehammer
Edit: And we’re done! Thanks everyone for coming out!
Spoiler Warning Hangout: Guild Wars 2 Edition
In case you missed it, Guild Wars 2’s final beta weekend started yesterday. And according to all my friends, all I ever talk about when I’m not on camera recording Spoiler Warning is Guild Wars. So I figured, why not let you all in on the magic as I drive everyone else who actually shows up completely insane by talking about Guild Wars while playing Guild Wars? Everyone wins!
We’ll be streaming the beta tomorrow (Sunday) from the usual ‘liberated’ Rutskarn Channel at 4 PM Pacific. That’s 7 PM on the East Coast of the United States, midnight in London, and 1 AM in the Netherlands and Sweden, and probably a bunch of other countries I’ve failed to mention. I’ll be there, Randy will be there, Shamus will… probably be there, depending on how masochistic he’s feeling. We’ll probably be able to rope Chris into showing up, he never seems to realize what’s happening until it’s too late.
Shamus will probably demand we play some PvE content, but rest assured, Randy and I will no doubt quickly hijack things and go try to kill each other in PvP. Or something equally absurd.
See you there! Or, not, if you’re a reasonable, well-adjusted human being. But when has that ever gotten anyone anywhere?
Half Life 2 Special EP19:
Set Piece – The GAME
Link (YouTube) |
This is a good spot to end for the week. Next week the plan is to have the final two entries, which will end Half-Life 2. After that, we’ll have the second half of 8 by Zombies.
The timeline of Half-Life 2:
Continue reading 〉〉 “Half Life 2 Special EP19:
Set Piece – The GAME”
Denuvo and the "Death" of Piracy
Denuvo videogame DRM didn't actually kill piracy, but it did stop it for several months. Here's what we learned from that.
Steam Summer Blues
This mess of dross, confusion, and terrible UI design is the storefront the big publishers couldn't beat? Amazing.
Bethesda NEVER Understood Fallout
Let's count up the ways in which Bethesda has misunderstood and misused the Fallout property.
Batman: Arkham Origins
A breakdown of how this game faltered when the franchise was given to a different studio.
Another PC Golden Age?
Is it real? Is PC gaming returning to its former glory? Sort of. It's complicated.
Games and the Fear of Death
Why killing you might be the least scary thing a game can do.
The Gameplay is the Story
Some advice to game developers on how to stop ruining good stories with bad cutscenes.
Twelve Years
Even allegedly smart people can make life-changing blunders that seem very, very obvious in retrospect.
Lost Laughs in Leisure Suit Larry
Why was this classic adventure game so funny in the 80's, and why did it stop being funny?
Mass Effect 3 Ending Deconstruction
Did you dislike the ending to the Mass Effect trilogy? Here's my list of where it failed logically, thematically, and tonally.
T w e n t y S i d e d