NEWER POSTS

The (Bad) Walking Dead EP 3: Ass of Holding

By Shamus Posted Friday May 8, 2015

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 68 comments
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Link (YouTube)

We’ve been kind to the game this week. We’ve admired it for what it tried to do. We’ve talked about what the game might have accomplished if it had been given more time and money. We tried to find the good among the bad. But then in the comments someone pointed out that right now, TODAY, Activision is asking FIFTY DOLLARS OF US AMERICAN UNITED STATES OFFICIAL MONEY for this horrendous low-quality cash-in. That’s disgusting, but also mindbogglingly stupid.

Making a zombie game so long after the zombie craze has come and gone is bad. Making a cheap zombie game to cash in on a license is worse. Asking full AAA price is worse still. Doing so when your trailer looks awfulAnd yet is still dishonestly better looking than the actual game. is more worser. Asking full AAA price when the jig is up, everyone knows the game sucks, and there are literally tens of thousands of far better games on the shelves for a fraction of the cost is insane.

In case you’re wondering, Activision published this.

I think we’re going to go through with our plan and make May “Zombie Month”. We’ll see how it goes. Thanks to Chris for putting the time and effort into putting these episodes together.

 

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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The (Bad) Walking Dead EP 2: Get Me a Thing!

By Shamus Posted Thursday May 7, 2015

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 45 comments
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Link (YouTube)

I’m really enjoying this game. I mean, I’m enjoying watching Chris playing it. It looks insufferable to play. Maybe it’s just that I’m still mad about how willfully awful Absolution was, but I find the bugs and dopey adventure game logic to be kind of charming.

I can’t really explain this. Mechanically, Absolution is a better game. Why am I more charitable towards a worse one? That’s an interesting question. I think a big part of it is that it doesn’t look like Absolution was starved for cash. They easily had both the time and budget to make a far better game. In the case of Survival Instinct, it looks like there just wasn’t enough time or money to go around.

 

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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45 comments

 

Grand Theft Auto Online

By Shamus Posted Thursday May 7, 2015

Filed under: Game Reviews 58 comments
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Way back in 2008 I wrote an essay contrasting cooperative/creative players with combative/destructive players. Roughly: Some of us sign on so we can build sandcastles, and the multiplayer exists as a way to collaborate and view each other’s work. Other people see multiplayer as a way to destroy other people’s sandcastles. A lot of games will focus on one or the other. (The Sims and Left 4 Dead are very collaboration-focused, while Quake 3 Arena or Battlefield are PvP focused.) Some games provide distinct areas for each kind of player. (World of Warcraft has both Roleplay and PvP servers.) The co-op players have their fun, the PvP players have their fun, and everyone goes home happy.

But some games are sociopathic in nature and are structured to lure the sandcastle-builders into a place where they can be prey for the sandcastle-crashers. This is GTA V Online. I’ve been playing GTA V Online with the rest of the castExcept for Mumbles. over the last week or so. Like the single-player game, it’s gorgeous, massive, lavishly produced, brimming with content, and aggressively obnoxious.

The most unforgivable sin here is that of excruciating loading times. GTA V already takes a nice long time to start up. Then it takes a really long time to launch into online mode. Then it makes you wait even longer so you can connect to an instance. Then there’s the actual loading screen proper where the game pulls art assets into memory.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Grand Theft Auto Online”

 

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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The (Bad) Walking Dead EP 1: Punch Her Butt

By Shamus Posted Wednesday May 6, 2015

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 60 comments
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Link (YouTube)

Here is the video Rutskarn mentioned, that features GATORADE NUT PUNCH. It’s funnier than us, so you should probably watch it last.

EDIT: So I originally posted this video with no text, with the video marked as private, and then went away for a couple of hours to play GTA Online with Rutskarn and Josh. Okay, I screwed up. In my defense, I’m still about 1000% less terrible at my job than whoever did the GTA V multiplayer.

So this is the first of three installments for Walking Dead: Survival Instinct. And if all goes well, we’re going to do a few more zombie games in the following weeks.

 

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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Experienced Points: Screen Time and Summer Releases

By Shamus Posted Tuesday May 5, 2015

Filed under: Column 80 comments
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My column this week is basically a mailbag episode.

Also, this is a pretty good illustration of how important titles are on a site like The Escapist. I knew the title was kinda flat. It doesn’t state anything bold, or ask a question, mention a current controversy, or promise to explain something. It just mentions two disparate topics. As of this writing, my column has been up for about three hours and doesn’t have a single response. On other weeks, I’d have at least a dozen by now.

A few Past titles with more “grabby” headlines:
What the Heck is a Fractal…
These Games Were Ruined by…
5 Things to Do if…

All of those performed far better than this one.

I know we’ll get a discussion here on the blog, but that’s because you’re here looking for stuff “by Shamus”. That’s fundamentally different than looking for, “Stuff to kill a few minutes”.

 

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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80 comments

 

Diecast #102: Konami, GTA V, Degenerate Strategies

By Shamus Posted Monday May 4, 2015

Filed under: Diecast 164 comments
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Hosts: Shamus, Josh, Chris, Rutskarn.

Show notes: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Diecast #102: Konami, GTA V, Degenerate Strategies”

 

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 #101: Paid Skyrim Mods, Cult of GabenPrevious Post
Next PostDiecast #103: GoG Galaxy, Dragon Age Inquisition, Witcher Series

164 comments

 

The Avengers: Age of Ultron

By Shamus Posted Sunday May 3, 2015

Filed under: Movies 241 comments
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Non-spoiler stuff first: I’ve said before that I think most science fiction gets robots wrong by projecting human desires onto AI. So we end up robots with a Pinocchio complex that have daddy issues, self esteem issues, bad tempers, romantic hang-ups, and a dozen other neurosis and quirks that really make no sense at all outside of a Darwinian biological struggle to survive.

I hope it’s not a spoiler to say that Age of Ultron does not break from this tradition. If anything, Ultron is worse than its robotic-overlord predecessors in this regard. The entire movie is more outrageously “comic book”-ish about its science. People can invent world-changing stuff in the time it takes to heat up a Hot Pocket and science is mixed in with magic with no regard for genre boundaries.

This makes it a very hard movie to believe in. (Particularly near the end, when it feels like all the rules go out the window.) If you’re going to suspend your disbelief, you’re going to have a lot of stuff to suspend and the writer isn’t really interested in helping you out, because explaining the rules would devour endless screen time.

I loved it.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The Avengers: Age of Ultron”

 

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.

Errant Signal - Life is Strange (Spoilers)Previous Post
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