Show notes: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Diecast #177: Gaming News Hot Takes”
“So Marshal Dughan sent us to the other side of the forest to investigate this Murloc business,” I ask. I do this because sometimes I stop paying attention when master is doing something really, really stupid.
“Yes. He said the reports of Murlocs are ‘sketchy’.”
“Even though he could walk around back of the building where he’s standing and see Murlocs?”
“Yes. But remember, we’re talking about the other side of the forest, here. He won’t send troops until he can be sure.”
We reach the edge of the the forest and find Guard Thomas stationed at one end of a wooden bridge. Norman explains the deal.
“Yes,” Guard Thomas tells us, “Murlocs have settled around the streams of the forest.”
“Okay,” says Norman, “Just write that down and I can take it back to Marshal Dughan, and he can send you some troops.”
“Well, see…” Guard Thomas wavers.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Shamus Plays WoW#10: Murloc Madness”
Link (YouTube) |
Here is the story about freezing pipes I promised in this episode.
Chris takes a moment to hate on the show Heroes. I agree. That show was terrible and frustrating. It had all of these interesting ideas, but they were buried under awful ideas, then undermined by inconsistent characters, before being ruined by directionless writing. The first season of the show had no idea what it wanted to be about or where any of the plot threads were going. It took me a long time to realize the writers had no plan. They would introduce an idea, toy with it, then wander off and do something else. I kept waiting for all those ideas to come together. I couldn’t believe the show was as random and scattershot as it seemed, which is why I hung around so long.
Despite the title, there weren’t any “Heroes” in the show. Nobody dedicated themselves to helping people. They just fought each other. Or rather, they spent 99% of an episode talking about fighting each other, and then there would be some embarrassing special effects as the fight began, and then we’d cut away and return once the fight was over, because if there was one thing this superhero show hated more than a coherent plot, it was excitement. You’ll see more action watching old Perry Mason reruns.
I think a big part of the problem is that I was really hungry for superhero stories. The Spider-Man series had just been run into the ground. Same goes for the X-Men movies. The Marvel Cinematic Universe was still a year or so away. If I’d realized we were on the threshold of a new age of brilliant cinematic superhero adaptations, I never would have bothered with this cheap, sad, dull, incoherent, idiotic band of no-name non-heroic mopes.
I guess the Japanese guy who could travel through time was pretty cool sometimes.
Link (YouTube) |
There’s a jumpscare right around the 14:30 mark here, and it doesn’t make any sense. It’s a jumpscare for the audience and not the characters, which is a problem I’d just been complaining about a few seconds earlier. Mike is looking through the binoculars and a face appears. For one thing, the face is very close. Since the characters are standing on top of a steep slope / small cliff, I have no idea how anyone could stand that particular distance in front of the binoculars without hovering above the ground. More importantly, Mike gives no reaction whatsoever. Either Mike is in on this murder (in the style of Scream) or the storyteller is engaging in flagrant shenanigans.
Josh suggested that maybe it was Jessica jumping in front of the binoculars for a second, but if you freeze the frame you get:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Until Dawn EP5: Corndogs?”
It’s now 1999, and I have an odd job
. Our product is a multi-user social environment. In four years, Second Life will show up and make a more successful version of this idea, but for right now we’re doing pretty good. Sometimes clients come along and ask us to build custom environments for them. A lot of these projects land on my desk.
I’m technically an “artist” in the sense that a lot of my job involves creating models and textures. But I’m more an engineer in terms of inclination and skill set. I don’t have a solid grip on aesthetics and I really envy my fellow artists who can nail a particular architectural style like “Gothic”, “modern”, “whimsical”, or whatever. I don’t have the flair for that sort of work. When I need to make something, I have a very literalist, brute-force approach to designing stuff. If someone sends me sketches or reference photos for what they want, I’m likely to just build exactly what I’m shown, while the real artists on the team are able to get the “vibe” the client is going for.
In any case, I see myself as a bridge between artists and engineers. I make tools to help automate some of the drudgery work of the art pipeline and sometimes I come up with solutions to time-consuming problems.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Crash Dot Com Part 2: The Art Coder”
Link (YouTube) |
So let’s talk about this wolverine. Apparently the wolverine went into the house and lived there without tearing up the furniture, knocking stuff over, or leaving droppings all over the place. Then it went to the bathroom where there is no food or water or anything else that might be of use to a small mammal without opposable thumbs. And then it somehow closed the door behind him. Then it went into the space under the sink, and also closed that door.
What I’m saying is that this wolverine is still smarter than every last one of these teenagers.
In Mount and Blade, you play an upwardly mobile and clinically indestructible side of medieval beefsteak. It’s a power trip of a game; through determination and self-actualization alone, you swizzle armies around you like cotton candy and personally slay the population of a modest kingdom. If you desire it, and play for long enough, it is an absolute guarantee that you can become the king of the world. Obviously, it was only a matter of time before someone adapted this franchise around celebrated works of Polish-language historical literature. Enter Mount and Blade: With Fire and Sword.
Very little has mechanically changed, but these changes have insidious effects on the greater experience. For example, there’s bullets. There’s rows of guys firing bullets. There’s rows of guys on horsebacks firing bullets at you. And the important thing, the crucial thing, is that you can’t duel the bullets.
Fans of the franchise who were used to exterminating entire castles of pseudovikings with nothing more than a caffeinated blocking reflex and a good fast battleaxe were quickly discovering just what 17th century Poland thinks of heroes. And many of them, it must be said, questioned the appeal of a mass combat game where you often die immediately and unavoidably. From a strategic viewpoint, it’s not unlike playing regular Mount and Blade during a thunderstorm.
Or so they think! Join me now as I relate to you my secret to success as an Eastern European warrior-poet: a terrible fear of being shot.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Master of Firin’ Sword CH1: The Art of Powerdice”
Lists of 'best games ever' are dumb and annoying. But like a self-loathing hipster I made one anyway.
What's wrong with a game being "too videogameish"?
Both a celebration and an evisceration of tabletop roleplaying games, by twisting the Lord of the Rings films into a D&D game.
Here's how this site grew from short essays to novel-length quasi-analytical retrospectives.
My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2013.
What was the problem with the Playstation 3 hardware and why did Sony build it that way?
What lessons can we learn from the abrupt demise of this once-impressive games studio?
Raytracing is coming. Slowly. Eventually. What is it and what will it mean for game development?
Did you anticipate the big plot twist of Batman: Arkham City? Here's all the ways the game hid that secret from you while also rubbing your nose in it.
This is a massive step down in story, gameplay, and art design when compared to the 2014 soft reboot. Yet critics rated this one much higher. What's going on here?
T w e n t y S i d e d
