T w e n t y S i d e d
Some more MC Frontalot for your Saturday morning:
Lost Emails
Notice: If you emailed me today, please re-send.
Let me just say that while I love Firefox, its email counterpart, Thunderbird, is a constant irritant. I’d change email clients, but…
You see, I have every email sent to me since 1997. (Uh, except for today’s. And a few other one-day gaps from things like HD crashes, computer migrations, and whatnot.) My archives are now just over 6GB. Now, 99.999% of that is stuff I’ll never need, but once a year I have some reason to reach back into the archives that sort of justifies keeping them around. Moving to another email client at this point would be only slightly less difficult than (say) getting divorced and re-married. To a complete stranger.
Anyway, I know there were 5 unread, non-spam emails in there before the thing went kablooey. So if you sent me something today, please re-send. Sorry.
The Escapist
I want to say some nice things about The Escapist. I hope this doesn’t sound too hollow coming from me, since I’m a contributor now. The following is in earnest, although I certainly can’t claim to be disinterested and unbiased. Adjust your perceptions accordingly.
Here goes: The Escapist is a fantastic site.
Over the past decade or so I’ve come to think of gaming magazines (and their website counterparts) as deafening hype machines infected with juvenile thinking and rampant fanboyism. Their process of reviewing a game is:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The Escapist”
Stolen Pixels #14:Azeroth Travelogue, Part 1
It was difficult to pry myself away from World of Warcraft. It’s simply impossible for me to play the thing casually. It eventually came down to an all-or-nothing deal, and so I had to shelve the thing so that I could move on to other games. I could have done a ten-part comic series on the game, but there are limits to my self-indulgence. With uncharacteristic restraint, I’m packing a few of the unused ideas into a three part series, and letting the rest go.
This is my extended farewell to the game: Azeroth Travelogue, Part 1.
XBox Advice
I’m probably still a couple of weeks from my XBox acquisition, but I wanted to solicit some advice as I contemplate the purchase. Continue reading ⟩⟩ “XBox Advice”
Master Of Orion 2
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You start off with a single homeworld in a hostile galaxy. You have to build ships, colonize worlds, research technology, grow your empire, construct warships, defend your colonies, and (eventually) subjugate the other other players to become the dominant species. It’s sometimes referred to as “Civilization, but in space”.
Some people celebrate Master of Orion 2 as the pinnacle of this sort of game. And just so you know what you’re getting into here: I am one of those people. The game came out in 1996, the same year the original Quake hit the shelves. MOO2 turns twelve this year, and I still think it’s the best of its kind. Don’t get me wrong, I think the Galactic Civilizations series is outstanding, but it never matched the MOO2 perfection for me. (Sadly, while I celebrate MOO2 as the best of 4X games, the sequel not only failed to live up to the greatness of its predecessor, it failed in a more general sense to be entertaining at all. MOO3 was the worst 4X game, and should only be sampled out of curiosity and masochism.)
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Like my Starcraft review, I want to examine this classic and see if we can figure out what made makes it so great, and why its charm has never been duplicated.
Preamble thus complete, let’s get pedantic:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Master Of Orion 2”
Changing My Tune
Over the past few weeks – when the tone of the site swung from “a little feisty” to “openly antagonizing and feral” a lot of people pointed out I was starting to sound like Yahtzee. It’s nice to know I was entertaining, but was sort of frustrating how far I’d strayed from the intended voice of the site. One of my goals for this place was low-key and thoughtful. (Unless, of course, we’re talking DRM, in which case it’s fire-and-brimstone all the way. This should go without saying.) If I’d wanted to sound like anyone, it would have been James Lileks.
He’s the MacGyver of essayists. Sure, any dolt can bang out 1,000 words on Can You Believe How Crazy It Is Raising Kids These Days? Lemme Tell Ya. But Lileks can start a post armed with nothing more than a coupon for a free 6″ sub and still manage to amuse the reader. Watching him turn the incidental into the insightful is like watching a magic trick. You could lock the guy in a dark empty room for 24 hours, and when he came out he’d tell you stories about the place that would make you wish it’d happened to you.
I do not expect to turn the banalities of my existence into blog posts anytime soon, (aside from the rest of this sentence) but I do hope that things will perk up here now that I’m no longer stuck indoors, sick, wasting away in the dark like Gollum with the One Ring. I don’t need to be Yahtzee, since Benjamin Croshaw has that gig covered.
Later today: A return to form with a review of a twelve-year-old strategy game.
From The Archives:
The Mistakes DOOM Didn't Make
How did this game avoid all the usual stupidity that ruins remakes of classic titles?
Silver Sable Sucks
This version of Silver Sable is poorly designed, horribly written, and placed in the game for all the wrong reasons.
How to Forum
Dear people of the internet: Please stop doing these horrible idiotic things when you talk to each other.
Deus Ex and The Treachery of Labels
Deus Ex Mankind Divided was a clumsy, tone-deaf allegory that thought it was clever, and it managed to annoy people of all political stripes.
Fable II
The plot of this game isn't just dumb, it's actively hostile to the player. This game hates you and thinks you are stupid.
Was it a Hack?
A big chunk of the internet went down in October of 2016. What happened? Was it a hack?
The Truth About Piracy
What are publishers doing to fight piracy and why is it all wrong?
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.
Civilization VI
I'm a very casual fan of the series, but I gave Civilization VI a look to see what was up with this nuclear war simulator.
Batman v. Superman Wasn't All Bad
It's not a good movie, but it was made with good intentions and if you look closely you can find a few interesting ideas.