T w e n t y S i d e d
This amused me:
Link (YouTube) |
Stolen Pixels #46:
How to Meet Women
Silent Hill: Homecoming explains why videogame heroes are usually loners: They’re really, really bad at small talk.
Comments open today, for those that have something to say but can’t be bothered with the whole registration thing. You can talk about this strip, or past ones, or ask questions about SP. You know, an open-thread type of event.
Black Mesa Source
Hey Valve, where the crap is Episode 3? What have you been doing for the last 14 months?
Hello?
Ah. Well. While we’re waiting…
Link (YouTube) |
…an indie team is getting set to unleash a complete re-make of the original Half-Life. This is different from Half-Life: Source, which Valve released a few years ago and which just ported the game to the new Source engine so that the game could have physics and a few other accouterments of these modern times. This is a complete remake. It looks stellar. So much so that when I saw the trailer I mistook it for a genuine Valve effort, which would have qualified them for the George Lucas Award of Overzealous Redundancy.
I have been lamenting the state of the mod community since the golden age ended. Games are now so complex that it’s hard for a handful of teenagers to take the tools and make something to rival the original work, which actually used to happen once in a while. The manpower required is just daunting.
It’s nice to see it’s still possible, though. I’m looking forward to seeing how this turns out.
Stolen Pixels #45:
New and Improved!
The new Silent Hill, now with more of… whatever it is the marketing guys say games should be doing this year.
STUDY: Violent Video Games Turn Teens Into Fat, Weakling Killing Machines
A new study released by the Institute for Responsible Entertainment revealed today that today’s “hyper violent” video games cause teens to spend hours in a limp, slack-jawed state of simulated mayhem.
Dr. Colin Jenkins, who performed the study said, “It is truly alarming… these kids spend hours playing what amounts to a murder simulator, while at the same time getting less exercise than someone who is asleep. This means the kids will have an amazing propensity for violence, and be in abysmal physical condition. This is dangerous for the kids, and mildly dangerous for the people they might someday try to harm.”
One of the test subjects, a 15 year-old Danny Larson, demonstrated one of the games in question. The game, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, shows Danny’s character robbing an old woman using a baseball bat. When asked about the game’s violent content, Danny’s father replied, “A baseball bat? Hell. I can’t imagine him leaving the house, much less using sports equipment.”
All of the test subjects showed signs of too little exercise, being either scrawny or overweight. Dr. Jenkins, summing up his findings said, “These kids could be a real threat to society if they ever got off their asses and did anything.”
George Lucas in Love
This has been linked to hell and back, but maybe you’ve managed to miss it up until now.
Link (YouTube) |
Also along these lines: My own take on what Star Wars would be like if it was written today.
Stolen Pixels #44: Onward and Upward
In World of Goo, incompetence kills. Actually, competence kills too, just slightly less.
From The Archives:
Seven Springs
The true story of three strange days in 1989, when the last months of my adolescence ran out and the first few sparks of adulthood appeared.
Do It Again, Stupid
One of the highest-rated games of all time has some of the least interesting gameplay.
The Best of 2014
My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2014.
The Biggest Game Ever
Just how big IS No Man's Sky? What if you made a map of all of its landmass? How big would it be?
Overused Words in Game Titles
I scoured the Steam database to figure out what words were the most commonly used in game titles.
Patreon!
Why Google sucks, and what made me switch to crowdfunding for this site.
Another PC Golden Age?
Is it real? Is PC gaming returning to its former glory? Sort of. It's complicated.
Skylines of the Future
Cities: Skylines is bound to have a sequel sooner or later. Where can this series go next, and what changes would I like to see?
The Loot Lottery
What makes the gameplay of Borderlands so addictive for some, and what does that have to do with slot machines?
Starcraft 2: Rush Analysis
I write a program to simulate different strategies in Starcraft 2, to see how they compare.