Twenty Sided

By Shamus Posted Monday Jul 28, 2008

Filed under: Game Reviews 133 comments

 World Of Warcraft:
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The Witcher is a role-playing game, as opposed to an RPG. While theoretically the same thing, the acronym “RPG” has mutated to encompass games in which you control a soulless empty shell of an avatar with no personality or history who levels up as the story goes on around him. So I’m calling The Witcher a role-playing game instead of using the slippery acronym to highlight the fact that you play a role here. Ergo, you pretend to be someone else. The problem is that this persona is set in stone before you even install the game. At the onset you are handed an immutable character, created by the designers, who then give you almost no freedom to deviate from their vision.

Hello ladies. Meet Geralt, the famous Witcher and even more famous <em>sex machine</em>. You <em>know</em> you want him. Kiss his leathery pockmarked face and run your fingers through his mop of stringy grey hair. He’s just like Brad Pitt, except without the good looks, wealth, talent, or personal hygiene.

Hello ladies. Meet Geralt, the famous Witcher and even more famous sex machine. You know you want him. Kiss his leathery pockmarked face and run your fingers through his mop of stringy grey hair. He’s just like Brad Pitt, except without the good looks, wealth, talent, or personal hygiene.

In the Witcher you play as Geralt, a monster hunter in a brand-new yet tiresomely familiar swords & magic style medieval fantasy world. Geralt looks like a played out and washed-up rocker leftover from the 70’s – an over-the-hill manslut with delusions of coolness and relevancy. Someone akin to Mick Jagger, only less successful and even more creepy, who trades on his long-faded fame in an effort to bed girls half his age and delay the realization that his glory days ended about two decades ago. I picture him getting up each morning and looking at his pasty withered mug in the mirror while thinking, “Yeah baby, I still got it“.
Continue reading ⟩⟩

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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Charisma Penalty

By Shamus Posted Sunday Jul 27, 2008

Filed under: Personal 0 comments

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Next PostFever Visions 

So my health is not so good. Nothing I want to bore you with. If I complained every single time something went wrong with my health this blog would turn into a pathetic dribble of whining and bellyaching. None of us would enjoy that. I’m the unlucky sort to have been born with a low Constitution score. You could make the case that constitution is my dump stat. Not a wise way to distribute one’s points, but sadly we don’t really get a choice in the matter, do we?

Things took a bad turn for me a couple of weeks ago and I’m still recovering. Then my PC broke down a week later.

I was just patting myself on the back that I’d managed to get through these hardships undetected, without it lowering the quality of the content here. But I’ve noticed several posts from different people letting me know that I seem to be exceedingly grumpy, snarky, and profane in comparison to my usual self. So I guess I’m not as clever or as stoic as I’d hoped.

Ah well. Do try to enjoy this extra-spicy version of the site until I get back to normal.

At least I’m not going all emo on you. Er. Until just now.

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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A Counter-Offer

By Shamus Posted Saturday Jul 26, 2008

Filed under: Rants 66 comments

 The Devil's KeyboardPrevious Post

Next PostThe End of Piracy! 

I’m (sigh) installing Steam, when I see a special offer pop up:

Here’s a counter-offer, you clueless marketroids: You give me a version of the game without any of that SecuROM / Online Activation nonsense, and I’ll pay you full price. (And for those who keep forwarding news stories saying 2KGames has removed the BioShock DRM: This is not true and it breaks my heart to see 2KGames getting away with making such claims. Stop it. You’re killing me.) The game is long since cracked. You guys have nothing to gain by continuing to cling to this DRM. This is doubly true of the Steam version of the game, since you have your online activation running on top of theirs. This means that if either Steam or the BioShock servers go down, legit customers (and only legit customers) get locked out of their game.

All the pirates who want it, have it. The only people who don’t have it are potential customers like me who won’t stand for this septic nonsense.

You’re having a sale on SecuROM? How nice. Go piss up a rope.

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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Flooded

By Shamus Posted Saturday Jul 26, 2008

Filed under: Links 3 comments

 Sink the PiratesPrevious Post

Next PostVideogames as Toasters 

Aaron Acevedo is an RPG artist. According to the Podgecast, he’s worked on games like A Song of Ice & Fire, Call of Cthulhu, Deadlands, Dungeons & Dragons, Legend of the Five Rings, Solomon Kane, Suzerain, Warlord, The Wheel of Time, and World of Darkness.

Last Wednesday a flash flood struck his home. So, he’s having a print sale to help manage the costs. If you’d like to get some sweet art and help a guy out, then just stop by his site for details..

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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Fallout 3:
Questions

By Shamus Posted Friday Jul 25, 2008

Filed under: Video Games 83 comments

 GreenhousePrevious Post

Next PostSpore: DRM Backlash in the News 

So, E3 is over. The gaming press has seen Fallout 3 and they’re all giddy with the pretty graphics and talking about how the game was one of the best in show. Everyone is excited and happy and looking forward to it, which means that now is the optimal time for me to kick the piss out of the thing.

I have other games here on my shelf. Games that are stupid, bland, boring, shallow or inane. Some of them were the most “exciting” titles in the E3’s of yesteryear. I know it’s easy to impress someone with a twenty-minute playthrough on a jumbo monitor at a convention when you can overwhelm them with spectacle and nobody has time to measure the depth of the gameplay. A good showing at E3 means your game doesn’t have any obvious fun-killing issues, but it doesn’t mean you’re ready to step into the shoes of a legendary franchise like Fallout.

The original Fallout wasn’t a sexy tech demo. It was an ass-ugly isometric game with cheap 2D sprites that offered incredible freedom, immersion, atmosphere, story, characters, and dialog. None of those attributes are things which can really be conveyed or measured within the ephemeral context of E3. I remember how things went with Oblivion, which was the last game Bethesda put out, and it’s only because of my great love for Fallout that I’m even entertaining the notion of paying attention to this game.

If I’d been at E3, here are the questions I would have asked the guys from Bethesda, probably right before I was escorted off the premises for being a pain in the ass and a killjoy:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Fallout 3:
Questions”

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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83 comments

Stolen Pixels #6:
Beware the Quest Giver

By Shamus Posted Friday Jul 25, 2008

Filed under: Column 2 comments

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Every Shade of BrownPrevious Post

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Vulture Milk 

It took me a while to get used to the comments on Stolen Pixels. It’s sort of disorienting when a discussion about DRM and IP law generates a hundred responses and a joke about boobies only nets us 25. Am I on the wrong internet?

But of course you have to register to comment on SP, which creates a natural barrier. (Not that I think this is a bad thing. The Escapist is many times larger and busier than this humble site and at some point you need registration for spam filtering and crowd control.) I just need to get used to this whole new professional… magazine… publishing thing. Also note that Mailbag Showdown, my favorite* installment of Zero Punctuation, has 1,157 comments even despite the registration barrier. Without registration, it would be unmanageable and unreadable. So registration is a good thing, even if it hurts my fragile self-esteem by keeping people from leaving me comments saying “LOL” and “your a fag“.

Where was I?

Oh right! The current comic. It’s up. Thus begins my series on World of Warcraft. On one hand, I’m pretty much the last person on Earth to make fun of this game. On the other hand, this game is just begging for it.

* We always love things which reinforce our own beliefs. I played SSBB with friends and found it to be a seizure-inducing clusterfarg of arbitrary mayhem and randomness.

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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Dr. Horrible Teaser

By Shamus Posted Thursday Jul 24, 2008

Filed under: Movies, Nerd Culture 49 comments

 Cardboard HaloPrevious Post

Next PostThe Dark Knight 

Dr. Horrible is gone, and I won’t see him again until DHSAB comes out on DVD, but the teaser trailer is lots of fun:


Teaser from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog on Vimeo.

It’s kind of messed up to be looking to the teaser trailer to supplement the offerings of the actual product, since I think it’s supposed to be the other way ’round.

While Dr. Horrible is unmistakably a success from an entertainment standpoint, I’ve been wondering if this project will succeed from a financial one. I lack the knowledge to even do some back-of-the-napkin estimates, but since this is the internet it was a safe guess someone else would. That links to an article discussing some numbers concocted by a guy who Joss Whedon himself said was “not far off”. We have no way of knowing how many iTunes downloads there have been, but the numbers do give us a picture of how many copies they would need to sell to begin to turn a profit, and they seem pretty low. That is to say, I would be very surprised if the show wasn’t making money already.

Now if they would just hurry up with the DVD.

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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