Hey, speaking of advertising follies, here is an ad I saw last week:
Fuedal battles? Sounds pretty good! But who are these guys kidding? Everyone knows the best strategy game is Roam: Toetal War.
Internet News is All Wrong
Why is internet news so bad, why do people prefer celebrity fluff, and how could it be made better?
Grand Theft Railroad
Grand Theft Auto is a lousy, cheating jerk of a game.
Spider-Man
A game I love. It has a solid main story and a couple of really obnoxious, cringy, incoherent side-plots in it. What happened here?
Grand Theft Auto Retrospective
This series began as a cheap little 2D overhead game and grew into the most profitable entertainment product ever made. I have a love / hate relationship with the series.
The Middle Ages
Would you have survived in the middle ages?
Ha! Someone was asleep at the keyboard that day.
I have great memories of Age of Umpires myself…
Don’t forget the turn-based classic, Master of O’Brian.
Battle at Ataris?
I have only played MaStar’s (title is perhaps shamusless reference to that Neopetlitan song “O sole Mia” and Lucien Parrotti?) distant relative, Sons of Shoe: Lars N’Fire.
I lost the references after the umpires.
the second one was Master of Orion…
As was the third
You mean Mister Onion?
Keiko?
Either her or Sisko, certainly.
I really liked Age of Methodology!
I know it’s shaming, but I did kind of like Hello Wares myself.
Is that similar to halo kiddy?
Now I feel compelled to go write a demo of “Halo Kitty Island Adventure” – the world’s first Hello Kitty first person shooter (possibly – I bet someone has been there already now I think about it).
Well, perhaps you may wish to take a look at:
http://www.kittyhell.com/2008/06/07/hello-kitty-doom-mod/
:-)
StatCraft is still the best imo.
edit: oh man, ninja’d a few posts below. I should really read the [number] comments before writing my own.
I was always partial to Empire Bird.
What about the turn-based Syphilization IV? I think that’s money well spent.
Expansions too, though I can’t remember their names right now.
There was a Civ reference on the ACT. No, I’m not kidding – it was a passage discussing the Pharos Lighthouse at Alexandria and it mentioned that there was a video game where you built empires, and if you built the lighthouse it gave you bonuses.
And a whole passage devoted to the development of Spacwars!
All in all, best passages ever!
Um… so many possibilities. Do you mean the test thing?
Yes, sorry. Apparently it’s an abbreviation of “American College Testing” – and that took more googling than I thought.
Sorry for those of you who either aren’t in the States or simply don’t remember high school when these tests were super important.
I remember, but largely because I took the ACT and not the SAT.
Do you mean Beorn the Sod, Whalers and Canalisation?
Ah, but how can we go on without mentioning Hamster of Magic? And Hear “O”s of Mites and Matches? I’ve spent weeks on the two. Also on Pun-zerg Genera, although that was more me watching my dad play.
Whalers, yes… but I think the second one was Beyond the Sore.
I never really got into the Fuedal era myself. I think the Total Was serie should never had gone away from their Shotgun : Total Was era.
If I remember right, the game is set in Arkanzas, right?
let us not forget alps of century.
My all time favourite game is Internal Darkness: Sammidy’s Requiem.
Comma and Conker is still pretty decent. even if I sometimes scream at the level designers.
Anyone remember Money Iceland?
Have you tried “Galaxy of Fantasy” yet?
I’ve always been partial towards economy building games like Grand Aphids: Rome and Topical 3.
Cid Myer’s Aleph Centurian was always my favourite.
Hm. That’s exactly the sort of thing I’d expect Rustkarn to put up as a headliner pun. Well, no, he’d call it “Master the art Wart of arp” or something, so..
Wait, what was I saying? Nevermind.
So… its a game about massive battles featuring samurai?
They do know about Shogun 2, right? Or is that an advert for Shogun 2? What the hell is it?!
Advert for Shogun 2, you can see it over at the Escapist in fact, though that particular frame lasts maybe 1 second of the whole thing.
There are ads at the Escapist? The only advertisement I see there is for videos at The Escapist. And the publisher’s club.
You probably have an adblocker or something on. I bought a pubclub thing a long time ago, so I don’t see ads.
Unless someone entered my home without me knowing and installed one, I’m pretty sure I don’t. I see ads everywhere else on the internet.
If I had a nickel for every unfortunate spelling I’ve seen in Internet ads, I’d be a very rich man…
Bah,another meideval game.Thank you,but Ill stick with my satrcarft.
I prefer Don of Wore myself
I’d be more likely to play Don of Whores than Dawn of War, to be fair. :-P
http://www.duelinganalogs.com/comic/2007/08/13/for-the-whored/
http://www.darklegacycomics.com/41.html
I recently bought a copy of the Marvel vs. Capcom 3 strategy guide, which in big yellow letters on the back announces it contains “TOURNAMNET STRATEGIES.” Now that really inspires confidence.
Ironically, the guide itself is exhaustively researched and error-corrected.
They were probably so focused on getting the contents right they forgot to check the cover.
The cover was probably proofread by different staff – or not at all. With ‘genre’ nonfiction like gaming books, the front cover is often in development before the text is done, but the back cover gets slapped together at the last minute. That way they have every possible second to milk every Tom, Dick and Harry the publisher vaguely knows for blurbs, get their ISBN and barcode (inevitably done late), and so on. ;)
If you’ve ever logged into TournamNet, you’d know that you really need strategies.
Wait, feudal battles? This is supposed to be for Rome right?
The ad is for Shogun 2: Total War, which fits the “feudal” descriptor pretty well.
Ha, Shamus, I saw that too. Well done.
Tying two get people too spell things correctly is feudal.
I mean, it’s knot like eh spell checker wood have discovered it.
There are things far worse than misspellings in the sordid world of free online games.
Evony is a medieval city-building game, and to my knowledge there’s no sexual content whatsoever in the game. That didn’t matter to the marketers though, and in the hunt for clicks the ad eventually devolved from the medieval stuff you might expect, to literally a pair of boobs.
I played Evony when it was still advertising with the yelling soldier, before it became T&A. I am now ashamed of this fact.
At least I never gave them any money.
My first thought was “I’ve only seen the first four of those”. Then I realized they’ve managed to make the logo so small and the ads so disconnected from the game that I just never figured they were for the same thing! Wow!
Warning the link that follows is NSFW!
http://logansrogue.livejournal.com/1239132.html
If you search the site, you’ll see that Shamus has talked about evony ads before.
The funniest of these sorts of ads for me was one that promised “Oriental, exotic, gameplay.” It may be meaningless as a description of gameplay, but I sure know who they’re marketing to.
I had to read the entire post twice to understand what you were talking about, Shamus. It’s a good thing other people out there are observant, ’cause I’m certainly not…
To be fiar,poeple can raed wodrs even if teh letrtes are julmbed.
EEgiinnrstt. Ahtw abotu fi I arstt giinrtw in aaabcehillpt deorr?
As lnog as you leave the fsrit and lsat lteters, it’s not mcuh of a porbelm.
I wr if I’m dg it wg..
Acellry, ghhotu, eht first adn alst eelrstt deen not be in ehirt cceorrt acelps, or hist dlouw be abcdeeehiilnpr.
Wow! But deos it wrok for wrods lkie ompetooaieona?
See, as much fun as that e-mail is, it’s not entirely true. Notice that almost every word involved is five or fewer letters long with the first and last being in the proper order. The brain is only having to “descramble” up to three letters which isn’t exactly genius level work. The few words that are longer have context working for them as well as the fact that most of the “scramble” is a simple letter transposition. With words like “onomatopoeia” above there’s no context and I scrambled the middle letters a fair bit and suddenly it’s not so easy anymore.
Although why I bothered with that, I’ll never know. I think the Language Nazis have Borged me. Resistance is fuedal.
I, for one, got “ompetooaieona” as quickly as I got anything else in that sentence. I suppose it’s a matter of how familiar you are with the original word.
This whole thread has been pretty easy for me, but I am, actually, a genius, so I’m probably not a good measure.
I guess you got “abcdeeehiilnpr” then? I thought about finding a much worse one, but that one was sort of self-referential and had a fun start.
Context really helps. Out of context, I saw that and went “what?” In context, it was really easy to turn that into “indecipherable”.
Yeah, context probably is key here. Without it, I think you’d be able to create a long word no one would solve without an anagram creator, or without way too much time.
Though some long ones are maybe easier again, like…
aaaabdeehiiiiilmmnnnrssssttt
aaccccffhiiiiiiiiilllnnnooput
I got “antidisestablishmentarianism” with very little difficulty, but the other one escapes me…
It took me less than a second to get “antidisestablishmentarianism”.
I’ll have to work at the second one.
Yep. It’s “floccinaucinihilipilification.”
That word’s not in my vocabulary. No wonder I didn’t get it.
Correct.
It’s fun how the second one looks shorter with all the i:s and l:s, but it’s actually one character longer.
EDIT: Wrong reply link… oh well.
I should have thought of antidisestablishmentarianism… That’s entirely different though, taking almost a minute to read one word isn’t what that email is talking about.
I have a friend with a shirt that’s basically got that on it. I wonder if he’s going to see this?
Taht is ture. Hwoveer, the frist and the lsat ltteer hvae to be in the ccrroet pclae to mkae it wrok wlel.
Njian’d!
Hah, weaklings! :D
True strategy masjers play games made by Paradoxy Intertraiment, like:
Crusader Kegs
Epocha Universalis
Vicky: Impure under sun
and
Hearts of Irony
Alright. I have to say, I nearly bursted laughing out loud @ Vicky : Impure under the Sun.
Talk about Rule 34… :’-(
I remember for years I was hooked on Word of Warcat. Game is so bloody addictive!
I preferred Warcat 3: Rain of chaos. I never did get around to playing frozen thrown, though.
funny thing is rain of chaos works almost as well of the actual title.
Warcat sounds awesome, though.
Warcat is a buffed-up version of He-Man’s ride.
He-Man? Really?
I would’ve made a Thundercats reference there.
“Eye of Thundara, give me sight beyond sight.”
You should definitely try Guilt Wars instead. I recommend starting with either the heresy’s chapter or the Knight’s fall chapter, than going to Fractions and I am the North.
the company that makes the game, Aren’t, is also coming out with Guilt Wars 2, which uses some of the original guild wars classes long normalancers and wranglers, but with new sorts of mechanics, as well as some new classes like giordanians and a sneaky class, something like a rouge type. Though it has its potential problems, I still recommend checking it out.
And in the midst of the deliberate typos, I made one (and possibly more) accidental ones: “classes long normalmancers” is supposed to say ‘classes like normalmancers”.
Also you correctly spelled “guild wars” once.
I wonder if this is the same company that made God of Wat. It was about this albino dude with red tatoos who texted all the time and forgot how to properly spell words or use punctuation.
It largely took place in an old Cambodian temple.
Man, all these years I was reading that Gud or Wat. Now I feel silly.
Resistance is Fuedal!
Ouch.
Funny how no one mentioned foolout and x cam yet.
And no fans of night and lethargic series?
Ahahaha, X-cam. Good times, good times. Though I preferred the second one – Tenor from the Beep, it really provides a challenge for you. X-Cam 3: A Pack of Lips, while nicely innovative with the time based combat, fell flat. And let’s not talk about Inner Sector or Endorser. Those things don’t deserve the X-Cam name.
Some of the sequels(remakes?)were decent though.I enjoyed afterblight,for example.
Now now, that’s a perfectly valid way of spelling fà¼dal.
I’m always partial to Calvin’s (of Calvin and Hobbes):
“In the middle ages, lords and vassals lived in a futile system”
“That’s “feudal” system.”
“Just when I thought this junk was beginning to make sense.”
The comment section on this one is the best part.
You mean the cooment setcion.
No, it’s the Kamen seg shun.
anyone fond of Sins of a Sailor Umpire?
I is.Though I prefer cathartic gerbilization myself.
You guys are so harsh. Look at the positive side! They got 11 out of 12 words RIGHT. That is over 90%!