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The Queue

By Shamus Posted Sunday Mar 29, 2009

Filed under: Notices 40 comments
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To answer the question you didn’t ask about what I’m buying / playing / reviewing:

1) GTA IV vs. Saints Row 2 review-off will finish up this week.
2) Left 4 Dead. Playing now. (Well, not right now, since the !@$%ing servers are hosed!) I’m not sure when the review series will start.
3) Kivi’s Underworld. I started playing this while waiting for my graphics card to arrive. I need to clock a few more hours on the game before I can say anything about it that would be worth reading.
4) Mount & Blade. Played some. Not enough to do the game justice, yet.
5) WiiFit. I have a lot to say about this game, but it never seems like the right time. Eventually.
6) Madword. It’s on the buy list.
7) The Path. This one was on my buy list. Then I saw that it required 2 GB of memory (?!?!) so I bumped it down the list. Then my computer blew up and the new one is more than up to the job. 2GB is still a ton of memory for a modest indie game to demand. It looks nice and all, but not “twice the memory of Left 4 Dead” nice. The Steam hardware survey a few months ago showed that 56% of Steam users have 2GB or more. So, even half the market of “hardcore” players won’t be able to run the game. Yeesh.
8 ) Team Fortress 2. I’ve been playing. Maybe I’ll do a quick commentary on it.

My “someday” list of titles, mostly to use as comic fodder:

Street Fighter IV, Gears of War 2, Resident Evil 5, The House of the Dead: Overkill, 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand, Afro Samurai.

On the “learn more about this list”:

Drakensang.

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

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40 comments

 

Authors@Google: Neal Stephenson

By Shamus Posted Saturday Mar 28, 2009

Filed under: Movies 35 comments
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Author Neal Stephenson visits Google’s Headquarters in Mountain View, Ca, to discuss his book “Anathem”. This event took place September 12, 2008, as part of the Authors@google series.


Link (YouTube)

Thanks to Kaedrin for finding this.

Anathem is still on my to-read list. I actually lost my way three-quarters through Quicksilver. It was a great book, but the honest portrayal of the savagery, brutality, and brevity of 16th century life put me off. The book alternated between fascinating me and filling me with revulsion. The need to take the thing in manageable doses slowed my progress, and once I realized I had two more nightstand-crushing tomes waiting for me after Quicksilver I was daunted. I quit with the intention of trying again later when I had more time. That time has yet to materialize. And now he’s produced yet another book. I don’t think it speaks well of my reading habits that Stephenson can write books faster than I can read them.

In the video, he talks about the book and also addresses things like the criticism that his endings are lacking. His response is very interesting because he points to the climactic nature of his finales. I actually never had a problem with that. All of his books have had a sufficiently epic climax, it’s just that it feels sort of abrupt to end the book right after the climax. It’s the equivalent of a man getting up the moment sex is complete and leaving without saying a word. It’s not that his books are unfinished, it’s just that the reader seems to be left with the impression that there was something more to be said. This is probably unfair to Stephenson. It’s more a convention that we’re used to. And there is something ironic about complaining about the length of a book and then taking issue with the concise ending. The cream of his writing takes place in his technical diversions and thought experiments, and there isn’t much room for that sort of thing in the post-finale pillow talk. But I suppose that criticism is the toll charged to those who break with established conventions.

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

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Gamethread Mar 27 09

By Shamus Posted Friday Mar 27, 2009

Filed under: Notices 39 comments
Left 4 Dead Server UpdatePrevious Post
Next PostThe Queue

My new graphics card is in. Radeon 4850. It was a gift. I would never have splurged for this much graphics card. (And certainly not after the hit my finances took earlier this week.)

It’s… It’s a lot of graphics card. I’ll review it later. In the meantime, I have the ability to view millions of extravagantly wrought pixels, and I intend to put this ability to use in Left 4 Dead tonight. I also might indulge in a little Team Fortress 2. Thread is open for any pre-game or post-game conversations.

Have fun.

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

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39 comments

 

OnLive

By Shamus Posted Friday Mar 27, 2009

Filed under: Video Games 64 comments
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Some people have solicited my opinion of OnLive, wondering what I would think of it.

OnLive is the darling of this year’s Game Developer’s Conference. It’s making the rounds and has more or less overshadowed all of the other GDC news this year. Wednesday’s Penny Arcade talked about it. Sort of.

The idea of the service is this: It lets you play console games or PC games without needing to own the console or required PC in question. It runs in a browser window or on a special micro-console, but the actual code is run on the server. You inputs are sent to the server, and the rendering is streamed to you realtime. In effect, the console is thousands of miles away in some warehouse that probably looks like a Borg Cube that just assimilated EB Games. Your game runs on that console, and you’ve got a really long extension cord on your controller and monitor that takes them all the way to your living room. An extension cord which passes through the internet.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “OnLive”

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Left 4 Dead - Group PlayPrevious Post
Next PostDRM in the Mirrorverse

64 comments

 

Stolen Pixels #76: Cheering You Up

By Shamus Posted Friday Mar 27, 2009

Filed under: Column 6 comments
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Another one of the conversations between myself and the WiiFit, transcribed for your enjoyment.

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Stolen Pixels #75: Interview With the RAM PyrePrevious Post
Next PostStolen Pixels #77: Go 4 Broke

6 comments

 

Grapple Rules

By Shamus Posted Thursday Mar 26, 2009

Filed under: Tabletop Games 48 comments
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I tend to archive binge on Darths & Droids instead of reading it as it comes out. Unlike my shooting gallery for common tropes, Darths & Droids is far more intricate and lends itself more to binge-style reading.

Last week Darths & Droids took on the Dungeons & Dragons (or the fictional equivalent being used in their world) system of grappling, and linked back to my own lampooning of Attacks of Opportunity. (The thread on that comic is one of my favorites. Every post insisting that AoO are simple is refuted by the simple fact of its existence. Then there were counter-arguments based on that fact. There were some posts that went on for paragraphs trying to sum up the rules, and I suspected they were actually just provocateurs on the other side of the argument. The layers of irony stacked on until I couldn’t tell which side people were on anymore. It was brilliant. Then there was a secondary discussion about archery. If you read the comic and not the comments, you missed out on at least half the fun.)

For you non-tabletop players:

Attacks of Opportunity is a system that lets combatants take an extra attack out of order to prevent people from exploiting the inherent turn-based nature of the game. You can’t just run between the guards and take a swipe at the king without them getting the chance to act.

The grapple rules deal with people grabbing, shoving, pushing, and wrestling in a fight. If you want to pry the golden chalice away from someone or knock the driver off the stagecoach, then you’re probably going to need to turn to the grapple rules. Those rules are, as the Comic Irregulars point out, many times more complex than AoO.

It is odd that I went after AoO instead of the grapple rules. Aragorn is even doing a grapple while they argue over AoO! This is mostly due to the fact that I’d never bothered with the grapple rules. In the games I ran, on the occasions that someone did want to grapple I always glossed over it with such vigorous handwaving that it probably looked like I was trying to fly.

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

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48 comments

 

GTA IV vs Saints Row 2: Story

By Shamus Posted Thursday Mar 26, 2009

Filed under: Game Reviews 21 comments
GTA IV vs. Saints Row: MissionsPrevious Post
Next PostGTA IV vs. Saints Row 2: Final Thoughts

The battle continues. Which game will win? Actually, I guess I sort of gave that away back in the first post. Still, let’s go through the motions together.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “GTA IV vs Saints Row 2: Story”

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

GTA IV vs. Saints Row: MissionsPrevious Post
Next PostGTA IV vs. Saints Row 2: Final Thoughts

21 comments

 
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