Let’s do another one of these poll things. As before: This isn’t so much “market research so I can focus the Twenty Sided brand and build audience retention through focused engagement with key demographics” as it is “I’m curious about some random crap and maybe you are too”.
The poll will stay open for about a day, and I’ll post the results later in the week with my own comments on what we have [not?] learned.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Poll: Finding Twenty Sided”
I have posted a new Reset Button video discussing the recent “hack” that caused the internet to malfunction last week. In my video, I show footage of a CNN interview where the anchor asks an expert if the DDos attack was a “hack”. That video originally appeared at previous link above, but has since been replaced with a more up-to-date video.
In any case, here’s the Reset Button, followed by the script for all you non-video-watching types:
Link (YouTube) |
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Reset Button: DDos DNS Hack”
Show notes:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Diecast #173: Nintendo Switch, Mailbag”
Master Norman has led us east along the road, looking for the landmarks that will lead us to the Jasperlode mine.
“We’re actually going to investigate this mine business?”, I ask.
“I don’t see why not.”, Norman says.
“You realize this is a huge waste of time, don’t you?”, I protest.
Norman gives a halfhearted shrug, “Look, this is what the guards want us to do. They know what the people around here need. We have to help the people of Azeroth somehow.”
We hang a left off the path and plunge into the woods. A few minutes later we reach the bustling kobold city that the Marshal Dughan hilariously referred to as the “Jasperlode mine”.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Shamus Plays WoW #6: The Truth Hurts”
Tonight! Josh will be playing Civilization 6, and the rest of us will help him through relentless distraction, questions, second-guessing, and criticism. When the show goes live you can see it at https://www.twitch.tv/spoilerwarningshow
LATER:
Well, that was fun. Josh had a rough start, hanicapped himself for purposes of fanservice, and then managed to conquer Rome just before the stream ended. Thanks for watching everyone.
Link (YouTube) |
Confession time: when I originally played this game, the final cutscene worked a little differently. (Or maybe it bugged out?) I stood by Shaun’s bedside, watched him die, and dinged a level right there without it cutting away for the final cutscene. It was a hilariously dissonant moment. I was hoping that would happen here. Actually, I was secretly hoping that that would happen, and Idiot SavantDur-huh ha HA! would proc, which seemed to be a fitting way to say goodbye to this questline.
But it worked more or less as intended, so that didn’t happen. This is far better than the way I experienced the ending, and if Bethesda fixed it then I’m grateful, even if it meant I had one less thing to laugh at. It all balanced out anyway, since we got the fog that obscured the big set-piece explosion at the end.
Mumbles said at the end that she wanted to play Fallout 4. I felt the same way. In fact, last night I re-installed my favorite Fallout 4 mods and started a new playthrough. I really did have fun with this game. It has some wonderful environments, the base-building is great, the combat is fun in certain situations, and I loved modding weapons. The companions range from forgettable to excellent, and there are a couple of quests that really work. But the main story is such a disaster that its failings infect the rest of the experience.
Earlier in the week Josh pointed me to this:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Fallout 4 EP51: Fog of War Never Changes”
Link (YouTube) |
Father says we have to kill the Railroad because “they have shown no regard for human life”. This, coming from the faction that’s been playing robo-bodysnatchers with settlements, dumping squads of killbots into the wasteland, and employed a remorseless amoral killer for the better part of a century. It’s said by a guy who turned his own pre-war father loose in a desperate violent wasteland with no expectation that he would survive. The guy who left his own father to die just so he could what would happen is pissed at the Railroad for having insufficient respect for human life.
The worst part is, I can’t even tell if this is deliberate on the part of the writers, because our character isn’t allowed to notice these things. Did the person who wrote this not know about how the Institute was behaving in the context of the larger story? Are we supposed to recognize this as hypocrisy? Or is our character expected to be ignorant of these things? I… I have no idea.
This series ends tomorrow. Also don’t forget that we’re doing a stream tomorrow.
Bethesda felt the need to jam a morality system into Fallout 3, and they blew it. Good and evil make no sense and the moral compass points sideways.
A video discussing Megatexture technology. Why we needed it, what it was supposed to do, and why it maybe didn't totally work.
When the source code for Doom 3 was released, we got a look at some of the style conventions used by the developers. Here I analyze this style and explain what it all means.
Raytracing is coming. Slowly. Eventually. What is it and what will it mean for game development?
Crysis 2 has basically the same plot as Half-Life 2. So why is one a classic and the other simply obnoxious and tiresome?
What lessons can we learn from the abrupt demise of this once-impressive games studio?
For one of the most popular casual games in existence, Match 3 is actually really broken. Until one developer fixed it.
I wanted to take the file format of a late 90s shooter and read it in modern-day Unity. This is the result.
I'm not surprised a fighting game has an absurd story. I just can't figure out why they bothered with the story at all.
This series began as a cheap little 2D overhead game and grew into the most profitable entertainment product ever made. I have a love / hate relationship with the series.
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