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?”
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.
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”
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!
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?
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”
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After I dumped on Left 4 Dead 2 yesterday, a few people wanted to know what I didn’t like about the game. As of this writing I have clocked 269 hours of Left 4 Dead, and 8 hours of Left 4 Dead 2. And yet, I can’t point to any single mechanic or problem that’s a definitive failure. I just… I like the original better.
This is going to be kind of vague and mealy-mouthed, which is why I haven’t covered this game in the past. If you’re looking for deep analysis then this is not the post for you. But remember, you asked for this…
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Left 4 Dead 2”
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T w e n t y S i d e d
