Twenty Sided

By Shamus Posted Monday Mar 21, 2016

Filed under: Column 74 comments

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My column this week is about the Windows 10 Store. Sort of. I guess it’s really about trust of a company that’s has done – and continues to do – a lot of harm to PC gaming.

This comment at the Escapist is worth reading. It puts an asterisk on several of the points I made in my column. I’m not really inclined to take anything Microsoft says at face value, but the points are there for the curious.

I remember a lot of teeth-grinding frustrations with GFWL that never made it into blog posts or columns. At the time I thought, “Bah, nobody wants to read more GFWL ranting. I should pace myself.” Now I genuinely wish I’d posted them for purely historical purposes. I always link to the same two anecdotes, and I don’t want people to walk away with the impression that I just had two bad experiences with GFWL. These are the tip of the iceberg, not the full story.

And it’s not like GFWL went away:

"Yeah our platform is broken and we know it and there's no fix."

These guys want to sell shit on the Win 10 store? pic.twitter.com/RCrO8u3olf

— Shamus Young (@shamusyoung) March 20, 2016

It looks like Quantum Break is the first game to be leveraged as a Win 10 store exclusive on the PC. That’s ominous. Someday they might do this to a game I care about.

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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Lord of the Rings Online #4: Dressed to Kill

By Shamus Posted Sunday Mar 20, 2016

Filed under: Shamus Plays 22 comments

 Lord of the Rings Online #3: Not a Sheeple PersonPrevious Post

Next PostLord of the Rings Online #5: Shadow and Flame 

If you remember from earlier we’re following the story of the Hobbit Lulzy. She’s my dual class Minstrel / Clotheshorse and she’s stuck in the Human town of Archet. Brigands surround the place, threatening to attack. She was led to Archet by Amdir the Ranger. Amdir is to the Rangers what Aquaman is to the Justice League: Slightly better than the average guy, but so much worse than the rest of the team that he only drags them down.

Amdir got himself stabbed by a Nazgul, and since then he’s been laying in the middle of town, being useless. (So, no change so far.) Now it’s up to Lulzy to take his place and aid in the defense of the town.

Well, I dealt a decisive blow against the brigands by killing a small handful of them. This should make sure the rest of them are good and pissed off when they show up and destroy the city later tonight. Now I’m thinking I should take a walk around town and see who else needs help. More importantly, I should see if they have any fun clothes to offer.

You're no Hermione, that's for sure.

First up I meet Ann Granger. A female soldier, who is guarding the lodge where the bulk of the town guard is hanging out and stuffing their faces. I’m glad to see the humans have such a progressive attitude towards women in warfare. It’s heartening to see women demonstrating our strength and independence by standing beside the men and having adventures of our own!

“Hail sister! What do you need?”, I greet her.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Lord of the Rings Online #4: Dressed to Kill”

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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Next PostLord of the Rings Online #5: Shadow and Flame 

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Good Robot #45: Old Robot

By Rutskarn Posted Saturday Mar 19, 2016

Filed under: Good Robot 34 comments

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Some of you may not have gathered this from my last two posts, but I, Rutskarn, was hired to write the award-winning* script of Good Robot. What you might also have missed (because I never actually brought it up) was that I was hired to write the script by Shamus in 2013. Which was a very different time for gaming; the Oculus Rift was a potentially overhyped newcomer and had yet to revolutionize videogames forever, The Last Guardian was still in development, and gaming channels on YouTube grappled with the thankfully short-lived “Wild West Apocalypse” model of copyright claims and takedowns. Heady times.

But at least one thing in this crazy world has remained constant, and that’s my willingness to (under reasonable duress) actually write Good Robot. Which I did–all the way back in 2013. Now three years later one thing in gaming really has changed, and that’s Good Robot, because the old script is now completely useless. As in, nothing could be saved–not even the model of storytelling. The changes we’d made to the game meant a total rewrite was necessary.

Let’s talk about why.

This is actually the first of a two-part series, but you don’t need to read either one to understand the other. That’s important, because this post–and only this post–is absolutely one hundred percent farm-certified Spoiler Free. The next one will hint at the context of the new game without, I think, spoiling anything, but consider yourself warned. Now–let’s hop right in.

Shamus has already guaranteed me a lock on this year’s Goldun Riter Awward, but I’m also gunning for the Horace Peasmasher Wrote Man’s Pennant, a prestigious prize granted thus far only to Wizards of Wor, CD Boggle (Sponsored by Kellog Cereals!), and Seasons of Mystery: The Cherry Blossom Murders.* And even–dare I say it–a Writer’s Guild award, that I might join The Force Unleashed and Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood as the premier storytelling achievements of the modern age.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Good Robot #45: Old Robot”

Rutskarn is a writer, author, wordsmith, text producer, article deviser, prose architect, and accredited language-talker. If you enjoy his contributions to this site you could always back his Patreon.

 Good Robot #44: Coming April 5Previous Post

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Mass Effect Retrospective 39: Cerberus Set Up Us The Bomb

By Shamus Posted Thursday Mar 17, 2016

Filed under: Mass Effect 229 comments

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EDI, the Normandy’s self-aware unshackled AI core, is scanning the inert robo-body of Dr. Coré when the robot comes to life and fights back. EDI wins, and downloads herself into the body. She emerges from the smoke of the conflict, swinging her new hips and effortlessly sauntering around in her high-heel… feet?

Robomantic Comedy

So Dr. Eva Coré had a solid plastic shell instead of hair and nobody noticed?

Remember that Dr. Eva Coré was a robot that posed as a human. Now we’re seeing her metallic innards with with her clothes and fleshy exterior burned away. You might expect she would be shaped like a terminator, since the writer seems to like that design so much, and also because that’s what human beings look like with the fleshy parts removed. But no. As luck would have it, EDI’s insides just happen to look like a fashion mannequin.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Mass Effect Retrospective 39: Cerberus Set Up Us The Bomb”

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.

 Mass Effect Retrospective 38: Cerberus UnlimitedPrevious Post

Next PostMass Effect Retrospective 40: TIM Island 

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Ruts vs. Battlespire CH1: Body By Bethesda

By Rutskarn Posted Wednesday Mar 16, 2016

Filed under: Lets Play 80 comments

 SWTOR: Legend of Hipstar 3:
Holo-conPrevious Post

Next PostRuts vs. Battlespire CH2: The Eldark Scrouls 

Released in 1996, The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall is one of the most seminal genre-transforming RPGs ever released.

Released in 1997, An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire is an RPG.

Daggerfall features gameplay that innovates on nearly every feature of the series. It uses its open world and nonstandard player goals to directly challenge the idea fantasy games should be fun-but-linear dungeon crawl experiences.

Battlespire features gameplay.

Daggerfall is broken, shabbily designed, clearly at the limits of its developer’s ability–but through the strength of its core design it emerges as a loveable experience, extraordinary for when it came out–even enjoyable by a certain kind of modern player.

We’re going to be playing Battlespire.

You might think that this is one of those old fantasy games full of cheap titillation. So, go ahead.

Don’t expect me to give much background. The game’s “best” experienced completely fresh. I know this isn’t a high bar, but it’s by far the most surprising Bethesda game I’ve ever played (this isn’t counting the NGAGE titles, which nobody played). If Morrowind made me feel awe and Skyrim made me feel powerful, Battlespire made me feel like there was a hidden camera in my Del Taco bag. It’s like meeting your best friend’s brother and discovering he wears tweed trenchcoats, speaks in a crooning, giggling whisper, and is pathologically obsessed with collecting six-inch porcelain dolls. Any of the three would be a little odd. Observing all of them over the course of one ebelskiver brunch guarantees you’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg, and you can’t help but wonder: how can these two individuals be related?

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Ruts vs. Battlespire CH1: Body By Bethesda”

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Diecast Autoplays

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Mar 15, 2016

Filed under: Notices 35 comments

 Spam ScriptPrevious Post

Next PostHangout March 29: Good Robot 

Dear valued Firefox reader: Yes, I know the Diecast is autoplaying when you visit the site. I’m just putting up this post as a catch-all so people don’t feel obliged to comment / email / tweet about it to me.

Sadly, it’s a bug in Firefox. Specifically, Firefox is incorrectly ignoring the autoplay=”false” directive. A few people have worked out the conditions required for the problem to manifest, which you can read about here.

Supposedly I could fix this by dumping the legacy <embed> tags and use only HTML5. That would (possibly) fix things for Firefox users, at the expense of people using old browsers or… pfft. I dunno. I don’t know how important the embed tag is, to be honest.

After some deliberation, I figured it’s a bad idea to punish non-Firefox people for the bugs in FF, so I’m keeping the embed for now. (Although I’d welcome some speculation / information on who uses it and how important it is.) As a temporary fix, I’ve moved the audio player off the front page for now. Hopefully the FF team gets this hammered out quickly.

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.

 Spam ScriptPrevious Post

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Good Robot #44: Coming April 5

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Mar 15, 2016

Filed under: Good Robot 120 comments

 Good Robot #43: Un-UnSolved MysteriesPrevious Post

Next PostGood Robot #45: Old Robot 

The date is set. We’re now committed to launch on April 5, or embarrass ourselves forever. Here’s the announcement trailer:

Link (YouTube)

Allow me to anticipate your questions: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Good Robot #44: Coming April 5”

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.

 Good Robot #43: Un-UnSolved MysteriesPrevious Post

Next PostGood Robot #45: Old Robot 

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