NEWER POSTS

Supergirl

By Shamus Posted Thursday May 21, 2015

Filed under: Nerd Culture 370 comments
The Future is Here!Previous Post

So the big news in costume crimefighting funnybooks last week was the new trailer for the upcoming Supergirl show on CBS:


Link (YouTube)

Lots of people are unhappy with it. For starters, it looks a lot like this idiotic and satirical SNL parody movie, except played straight. Our protagonist is a down-on-her-luck assistant to a powerful magazine editor who is looking for love and approval. So it’s Superman crossed with The Devil Wears Prada, maybe with a twist of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” thrown in. It feels like an executive got the green-light to make a superhero show and – unable to imagine a world where women would watch a power fantasy – his first instinct was to take the bog-standard “chick flick” formula and make the protagonist a super. Going by the trailer, it feels less like a superhero with romantic elements and more like a rom-com with comic book elements.

It really rubbed me the wrong way. The whole thing. The whole, “Nobody respects me” angle can work for some heroes. But Supergirl? At one point a guy tells Supergirl – in her Supergirl costume – to stick to getting coffee. I can buy the idea that a government guy would tell Spiderman to “stick to taking pictures”. I can believe he’d disrespect Daredevil, Ant-Man, Aquaman, Mr. Fantastic, The Flash, or Luke Cage. But Supergirl? if you don’t trust her with matters of national security, fine. If you’re really so dumb you can’t imagine ANYTHING more useful that could be done with limitless thrust, fine. If you’re dumb enough to SAY THAT TO HER FACE then your character is the worst sort of drama-for-its-own-sake contrivance.

Also, the line about capes aiding with “aerodynamics” made me reflexively shake my head. I can believe in a world where an alien gets laser eyes because the sun is yellow, but I’m not going to accept the idea that a loose cloth cape offers the slightest bit of air control. Stop being so silly.

I get why she’s serving coffee, but this makes me want to shout at the screen, WHY DON’T YOU HELP PUT STUFF IN ORBIT YOUR POWERS ARE WORTH BILLIONS!

But!

The problem is not this show, the problem is the lack of alternatives.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Supergirl”

 

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.

The Future is Here!Previous Post

370 comments

 

Resident Evil EP1: Enter The Survival Horror

By Shamus Posted Wednesday May 20, 2015

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 72 comments
Dead Island EP 3: They're Massacring Me!Previous Post
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Link (YouTube)

Here is the original intro to Resident Evil that we discuss in this episode.

To be clear: When I described the old rendering techniques, I was talking specifically about the original Alone in the Dark. In that game, it would render the room once, making both a fixed image and some sort of depth mapSo your character could walk behind elements in the image.. Then it would take that single fixed view and render the dynamic stuff on top of it: The player, moveable items, monsters, etc. This was well before the age of graphics acceleration, so every single processor cycle was precious.

All of this is based on my observations from playing the game. I don’t know for sure how it actually worked. It’s certainly how I’d tackle the problem on those old machines.

 

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.

Dead Island EP 3: They're Massacring Me!Previous Post
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72 comments

 

Experienced Points: Hatred and the Catharsis of Violence

By Shamus Posted Tuesday May 19, 2015

Filed under: Column 202 comments
Experienced Points: The Digital Distribution Wars Are On AgainPrevious Post
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This week I wrote a column about Hatred, the upcoming game where you go on a killing spree and try to slaughter as many innocent people as you can. I’ve been thinking about this game for months, and I actually had more to say about it than could fit in a single column. (And I didn’t think it warranted two columns in a row.) So go read the article, then come back here and read the rest of my thoughts on the game.

For context: I have my Playstation right next to my PC, so every time I took a break from writing the column I’d pick up the controller and play a little more GTA V, where I was trying to see how long Trevor could survive with a five-star wanted level. I killed dozens of civilians and hundreds of cops during the course of writing this column, and it was pretty fun. Then I watched a few segments of the Hatred trailer and got sick again.

Ain’t this dandy?
A degenerate, degenerate strategy: I’m always looking for spots where you can hold off the police for a long time. I think the Ammu-Nation in Pillbox Hill (the one with the shooting range) is the best you could possibly hope for. You’ve got cover, you’ve got protection from helicopters, you’ve got a single choke point for the AI to funnel through, and you’ve got a vending machine to refill your health. Once you master blind-fire headshots with a shotgun (lining guys up and headshotting them without using a cursor) you can hold them off forever.

Getting away is still pretty tricky, though.

In GTA, it’s not your goal to kill the police. (Although sometimes they are in the way of your goal.) More importantly, the police aren’t sympathetic public servants. They’re brutal, corrupt jackasses who will shoot you in the face for denting one of their cruisers and who scream stuff like, “Killing makes my dick hard!” in a firefight. In the Hatred trailer, we only see police officers as victims being sadistically murdered as they try to stop you from killing civilians. So even though both games have killing people as a gameplay element, the framing, tone, context, and focus are completely different.

It’s like nudity: One picture of bare breasts is obviously pornography and another is obviously fine art, and there’s a whole lot of grey area between the two. But the fact that the line is blurry doesn’t mean the two things are the same. Context is everything.

There’s one other thing about this game, which is that I’ve seen people claim that it’s “satire”. I’ve watched the trailer a couple of times now, and I haven’t detected even a whiff of satire. Satire is more than simply presenting a thing. If this was satire, it might sound like this:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Experienced Points: Hatred and the Catharsis of Violence”

 

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.

Experienced Points: The Digital Distribution Wars Are On AgainPrevious Post
Next PostExperienced Points: 50 Shades of The Dark Knight

202 comments

 

Diecast #103: GoG Galaxy, Dragon Age Inquisition, Witcher Series

By Shamus Posted Monday May 18, 2015

Filed under: Diecast 149 comments
Diecast #102: Konami, GTA V, Degenerate StrategiesPrevious Post
Next PostDiecast #104: Nvidia HairWorks, Star Trek 3, Marvel Movies, Supergirl

Last week Rutskarn told a tabletop gaming story about the one time he used poison to kill a whole hive of giant ants and break the campaign. A few people had questions about how this could possibly work, given certain rules that escape me at the moment. Rutskarn wanted to add this for the benefit of the curious rule-sticklers out there:

It is correct that a.) draining Intelligence is not lethal, and b.) it shouldn’t really work like that on ants anyway–except if the GM says it does. But my story was a simplification.

In short: what actually happened was I had my character perform an autopsy on a dead ant, got a great roll, and I asked the GM if using this anatomical survey I could formulate an effective ant poison out of materials or chemicals I knew of (knowing that ants are actually not super hard to kill, as insects go). It was him that prompted that an Int poison would kill them, either not knowing or just not caring how the rules worked.

From there, the crafting and delivery method were down to us. We jacked the dosage up high enough that even diluted from ant to ant it would remain lethal, which wasn’t hard, as the cost of the ingredients was actually very reasonable.

I don’t know what any of that means but it sounds really important. I’ll let you rule lawyers sort this out. Here’s the new episode:

Download MP3 File
Download Ogg Vorbis File

Hosts: Shamus, Josh, Chris, Rutskarn.

Show notes: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Diecast #103: GoG Galaxy, Dragon Age Inquisition, Witcher Series”

 

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.

Diecast #102: Konami, GTA V, Degenerate StrategiesPrevious Post
Next PostDiecast #104: Nvidia HairWorks, Star Trek 3, Marvel Movies, Supergirl

149 comments

 

Grand Theft Simulated Traffic

By Shamus Posted Sunday May 17, 2015

Filed under: Video Games 90 comments
Cities: Skylines: Death to Chirpy!Previous Post
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Grand Theft Auto III turns 14 years old this year. The series has grown and evolved quite a bit since then. And yet in all that time, a few problems have lingered. No, I’m not talking about the lame guessing-game approach to mission design. I’m talking about the fact that this is what GTA looks like when you’re driving around:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Grand Theft Simulated Traffic”

 

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.

Cities: Skylines: Death to Chirpy!Previous Post
Next PostWhat is Piracy?

90 comments

 

Dead Island EP 3: They’re Massacring Me!

By Shamus Posted Friday May 15, 2015

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 139 comments
Dead Island EP 2: What Do We Have Here?Previous Post
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Link (YouTube)

On Metacritic, The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct (which we covered last week) has 38 on metacritic while Dead Island has a score of 80The scores are closer if we go by user reviews, with scores of 2.5 and 6.8, respectively.. This makes no sense to me. Both are mechanically confused and unpolished games about fighting zombies. Is the knife-execution move of Survival Instinct really that much dumber than the high-kick of Dead Island? Don’t they both have about the same desultory approach to dialog and “story”? They both have the same energy drink = healing idea. Both have glitchy unpolished art, although I concede that Dead Island looks technically superior even if it’s artistically on about the same level.

I’m not saying the two games are equal. I’m just curious as to why Dead Island is rated so much higher. And I’m not just talking about review scores. Dead Island was given a larger spotlight, more favorable reviews, and was a current story for longer after release, while Survival Instinct was a passing joke.

Is it because the eye-grabbing trailer give us journalists something to talk about? Is it because Dead Island has more modern graphics? Is it because Survival Instinct is a licensed game and nobody takes those seriously anyway?

 

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.

Dead Island EP 2: What Do We Have Here?Previous Post
Next PostResident Evil EP1: Enter The Survival Horror

139 comments

 

Dead Island EP 2: What Do We Have Here?

By Shamus Posted Thursday May 14, 2015

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 73 comments
Dead Island Ep 1: Oar and PeacePrevious Post
Next PostDead Island EP 3: They're Massacring Me!


Link (YouTube)

Once again I fear Chris is going to take a bunch of crap for not following the compass. In his defense, that particular compass is kind of confusing and it’s not at all clear from the prompts what you’re supposed to be doing. Apparently you need to open up your journal, read your goals, then consult the compass to track down the zombies. The skull on the compass means “zombie here”, and the little arrow (that’s actually pretty dang far from the skull) means “the zombie is on the floor above you”. This would be somewhat more forgivable if the goal was something like, “Bring the Quest Item back to Bob Questgiver.” But here your goal is “kill all the zombies before you try to use the radio. Yes, even the hidden zombie that isn’t a threat to you and you don’t even know it exists.” It’s just more lazy, dumb, confusing nonsense.

Let’s talk about the stamina meter:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Dead Island EP 2: What Do We Have Here?”

 

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.

Dead Island Ep 1: Oar and PeacePrevious Post
Next PostDead Island EP 3: They're Massacring Me!

73 comments

 
OLDER POSTS
From The Archives:

Grand Theft Railroad

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Silent Hill 2 Plot Analysis

A long-form analysis on one of the greatest horror games ever made.

 

Spoiler Warning

A video Let's Play series I collaborated on from 2009 to 2017.

 

D&D Campaign

WAY back in 2005, I wrote about a D&D campaign I was running. The campaign is still there, in the bottom-most strata of the archives.

 

Megatextures

A video discussing Megatexture technology. Why we needed it, what it was supposed to do, and why it maybe didn't totally work.

 

Starcraft 2: Rush Analysis

I write a program to simulate different strategies in Starcraft 2, to see how they compare.

 

Batman: Arkham Origins

A breakdown of how this game faltered when the franchise was given to a different studio.

 

The Disappointment Engine

No Man's Sky is a game seemingly engineered to create a cycle of anticipation and disappointment.

 

How I Plan To Rule This Dumb Industry

Here is how I'd conquer the game-publishing business. (Hint: NOT by copying EA, 2K, Activision, Take-Two, or Ubisoft.)

 

Free Radical

The product of fandom run unchecked, this novel began as a short story and grew into something of a cult hit.