NEWER POSTS

Knights of the Old Republic EP38: Manaanigan

By Josh Posted Thursday Dec 31, 2015

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 42 comments
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Link (YouTube)

I’m not sure whether I respect KOTOR’s handling of the Selkath kids quest or am annoyed by it. On the one hand, in a modern (and unreasonably terrified you might miss content) game, the quest would have triggered when you approached the locked door whether you had it or not. And to an extent, that makes logical sense; at the very least, it doesn’t seem as if you knowing about the missing children ahead of time would make any difference as to whether or not the door would be open.

On the other hand, that aforementioned phobia that players might dare to actually miss content (the horror!) intensely irritates me on some base, indescribable level. And I have to give KOTOR props for committing to it, even if the player decides to take it as far as committing court-assisted suicide; I legitimately expected someone from the Republic to show up and go “No no no no,” right up to the moment we got electric-chaired.

I guess, ultimately, what I’m saying is that I respect KOTOR’s quest design, I just wish it was a little less clumsy with it. Which really is how I’ve come to feel about the game as a whole.

 

Josh Viel is the primary editor and producer of the Spoiler Warning video series. You can support the show by backing the Patreon.

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42 comments

 

Knights of the Old Republic EP37: The Shocking Conclusion of KOTOR

By Shamus Posted Wednesday Dec 30, 2015

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 77 comments
The Long Dark Spoiler Warning ChristmasPrevious Post
Next PostKnights of the Old Republic EP38: Manaanigan


Link (YouTube)

Fair warning: This episode is bound to be an instant classic. It starts off with some armchair game design, loses its way, makes a bunch of inside jokes, and then goes off-topic, while unendurable ages of indistinguishable combat roll on. Then we discover we came all this way for nothing, before it’s revealed that we REALLY came all this way for NOTHING.

That’s a really strange ending for a AAA game, even in 2003. It lacked closure. Oh well. Next up I think we’re going to play Dragon Age: Origins: The Deep Roads: Maximum Difficulty: Solo Run.

See you there.

 

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.

The Long Dark Spoiler Warning ChristmasPrevious Post
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77 comments

 

Good Robot #40: Overdraw

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Dec 29, 2015

Filed under: Good Robot 90 comments
Good Robot #39: Teaching Players to Good RobotPrevious Post
Next PostGood Robot #41: Why Promote Your Game?

My to-do list grows and shrinks as the project rolls on. I’ll have 20 items on my to-do list one week. I’ll get 13 of them done. Then at our next weekly meeting, those 13 are reviewed. Some are marked as done. Some end up back on the list because my solution was too narrow, or didn’t work in all cases, or I misunderstood the problem. Then a few new issues will get piled onto the list.

So after the meeting my to-do list will be back up to 25 or so items and we’ll begin again. So it goes.

But some items have never been touched. They’ve haunted the bottom of the list, never getting done, never getting looked at. The oldest item on my list now is actually a collection of bullet-points that can all roughly be summed up as “performance problems”. To wit: The game runs too slow.

Not on my machine, mind you. It’s fine on my machine. But on craptopsCrappy laptops, or any similarly under-powered machine. is runs at about half the framerate it should. So what’s going on?

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Good Robot #40: Overdraw”

 

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 #39: Teaching Players to Good RobotPrevious Post
Next PostGood Robot #41: Why Promote Your Game?

90 comments

 

Experienced Points: Yes, Minecraft is Still a Thing

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Dec 29, 2015

Filed under: Column 29 comments
Experienced Points: How Witcher 3 Breaks all the RulesPrevious Post
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My column this week seems like it’s about Minecraft, but really it’s about the occasional disconnect between the hype-driven gaming press and the actual interests and passions of gaming culture.

I include myself in this. If I did my writing based on what I was playing, this would be a “Minecraft and retro games” blog, with a new AAA game thrown in a few times a year for variety. Deciding what to talk about is always a balancing act between what you’re into and what you think other people want to talk about. It’s not bad, it’s just a strange artifact of this process that sometimes games that are a huge deal end up vanishing into their own subculture.

 

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.

Experienced Points: How Witcher 3 Breaks all the RulesPrevious Post
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29 comments

 

Diecast #134: Steampocalypse, 2015 Wrap-up, Star Wars

By Shamus Posted Monday Dec 28, 2015

Filed under: Diecast 186 comments
Diecast #133: Disney, MailbagPrevious Post
Next PostDiecast #135: 2016



Hosts: Josh, Rutskarn, Shamus, Campster, Mumbles. Episode edited by Rachel.

This week we have a TOTAL SPOILER discussion on the new Star Wars. Turn back or have the movie spoiled. This means you, fanboy. Seriously, I drop the biggest spoiler of the whole movie right at the 40-minute mark as I introduce the topic.

Let’s just assume the comments will be spoiler-heavy, too.

Mumbles and Rutskarn haven’t done their end-of-year thing yet, so this week is their chance. Find out what they thought of 2015.

00:01:16: OMG Steampocalypse 2015!!11


Link (YouTube)

00:08:56: Rutskarn and Mumbles talk about 2015.

They start with Undertale.

00:14:42: Pillars of Eternity
00:14:51: Arkham Knight
00:17:54: Fallout 4
00:20:25: Hotline Miami 2
00:21:51: Tony Hawk
00:22:59: Skylanders
00:26:11: The Beginners Guide
00:27:09: Fallout 4 again for some reason?
00:40:54: STAR THE FORCE AWAKENS WARS


Link (YouTube)

 

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 #133: Disney, MailbagPrevious Post
Next PostDiecast #135: 2016

186 comments

 

New Year’s Stream 2016

By Shamus Posted Sunday Dec 27, 2015

Filed under: Notices 47 comments
Hangout: Steamtroller: It's Over!Previous Post
Next PostHangout: New Year 2015: It's Over!

This Thursday night, we’ll be hanging out and streaming, celebrating the New Year by playing one of Josh’s incomprehensible strategy games about history or politics or something else that isn’t kung-fu or aliens.

The stream will start at 10pm eastern time, by which I mean Josh will wake up and begin preparing food at 10pm and he’ll start the stream once he’s done eating, cleaning up, and watching a couple of episodes of Good Eats. So we should probably all start watching the stream at 10pm because that’s what we always do.

For those of you who don’t live on the eastern seaboard, you’ll have to convert the time zones yourself, or consult the little gadget below:

I’ll put up a link to the stream when the time approaches.

 

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.

Hangout: Steamtroller: It's Over!Previous Post
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47 comments

 

The Long Dark Spoiler Warning Christmas

By Shamus Posted Friday Dec 25, 2015

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 115 comments
Hangout Steamtroller: Mirror's EdgePrevious Post
Next PostKnights of the Old Republic EP37: The Shocking Conclusion of KOTOR

Merry Christmas, everyone! I hope you’re enjoying the holiday. The Spoiler Warning cast got together on Christmas Eve-Eve, because we wanted to help you celebrate.

Traditionally, Christmas is a time we associate with:

  1. Being with family and friends
  2. Good food.
  3. Bright cheerful decorations.
  4. Gathering around a fire.
  5. Exchanging gifts.

So we figure the best way to celebrate this time with friends and and family is to ignore them and instead watch this video about a game where…

  1. You are totally alone, without the hint or hope of meeting another human soul. Your only company is a vast wilderness full of wild beasts, who are trying to eat you.
  2. You are hungry. You can’t even imagine how hungry. Like, if you’re really lucky your Christmas dinner might be a jug of ice cold toilet water.
  3. It is dark. So dark you can’t even see how utterly alone you are.
  4. You are cold. So cold you can’t even feel your exhausted dead limbs as you tumble into a sleeping bag on the hard floor and hope you can get just an hour or two of sleep without freezing to death.
  5. You are plunged into the most desperate poverty, and your only “Christmas gifts” will be the meager trinkets you can scavenge from the silent corpses you encounter in your wanderings.

So from all of us, to all of you, enjoy The Long Dark, you doomed, isolated wastrel:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The Long Dark Spoiler Warning Christmas”

 

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.

Hangout Steamtroller: Mirror's EdgePrevious Post
Next PostKnights of the Old Republic EP37: The Shocking Conclusion of KOTOR

115 comments

 
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