Here is the footage from the hangout we did three days ago. I guess we can consider this the finale to zombie month. We were hoping to cover Dead Rising 2, but that didn’t work out. Later this week we begin our coverage of Arkham Asylum. Are you excited? I’m excited.
Link (YouTube) |
Later in the week I’ll post the second half of this hangout, where Josh plays Witcher 3.
The good news: I have glorious new audio equipment. It’s super nice. I have a great microphone and even a boom arm. The bad news: I really needed to test it out before we recorded this. I just adjusted things so they sounded fine in my headphones, without testing to see what was actually being picked up by the equipment. The result is I was too close to the mic and it sounds like I’m talking into a pillow. Then sometimes I lean in too close to the mic and it sounds even worse.
So:
Shamus + improved equipment + stunning ineptitude - due diligence = massive downgrade in audio quality.
I should have tested. Kicking myself now. Enjoy the creepy feeling of being trapped in the trunk of a car with my voice.
I promise it’ll be better next week, or I’ll make Josh eat a bug.
Download MP3 File
Download Ogg Vorbis File
Hosts: Shamus, Campster, Josh, Mumbles, and Rutskarn.
Show notes: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Diecast #107: Fallout, Splatoon, Life is Strange”
Witcher 3 is really good. At this point, it’s my Game of the Year. Actually, it’s my “Game of the Last Several Years”. I’ve spent the last week having these little moments where I put the controller down and say, “Wow. This game is really amazing.” The reasons why I like it so much can wait for another post. What I want to talk about is the bit last week when I rage-quit, then came back a few days later, rage-quit again, and then loudly and publicly quit the game via Twitter.
The full tale looks like this:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Witcher 3: Get Dandelion”
So there I was, Tuesday morning, chatting with Shamus. And he was bemoaning the fact that without any Spoiler Warning recorded, the content on the blog this week would be sparse and he would have to spend more time this week being Rich Successful Internet Personality-Man and less time being Awesome Cool Legit Indie Game Developer-Man. So I said to him, “Well, hey, why don’t we do a hangout? It’ll be easy, free content to fill out a few days on the blog and, hell, they probably wouldn’t even notice if you didn’t show up.” He liked this idea, so I went about planning it.
And then Shamus started writing about Fallout 3 again, and oh dear god what are you even–
Uh, right, so there’s going to be a hangout tomorrow, at 4 PM Pacific. Same twitch channel as always. We’ll probably be playing Killing Floor 2, or something.
When the stream is live, you’ll find it here: www.twitch.tv/spoilerwarningshow.
My daughter Esther has been really keen on watching me play the Witcher 3, which I’m really enjoying. After a while I can tell she’d really rather be playing herself. Finally she asks if she can play it on her computer. My first thought is that her computer probably isn’t up to it, but I’m not sure. So I tell her she needs to buy a copy of the gameShe might also need some upgrades. I need to check. This game is a monster..
Later Esther comes to me slightly perplexed and asks me point-blank, “Dad, how come I have to get my own copy of the game? Can’t I just install yours?”
I pause the game and let out a slow breath. She’s 15, and I can’t believe this has never come up before. Everyone in the family has Steam accounts and their own game collections, and nobody has ever taken a stab at this question before now. I guess the $60 price tag is giving her a reason to ponder this. “Well, if it was a book and we both wanted to read it at the same time, then we’d need two copies.”
She is nodding before I’m done saying the words. As soon as I stop talking she blurts out, “Yeah, but that’s a physical book. This is like a Kindle book, and you can have those on several devices at once.”
“Okay. So you think it’s reasonable that you and I could play the game on two different computers at the same time?”
“Well… yeah,” she says with a little uncertainty.
I try to lighten the tone. I don’t want her to think I’m accusing her of wanting anything wrong. I’m just trying to suss out how she thinks things should work. I present it as a thought experiment. “So what if everyone in the family downloaded the game and we all played it on our machines at the same time? Is that ok?”
“Yes?” she says even more uncertainly. It’s clear she hadn’t imagined this possibility.
“What if we shared it with your uncles?” She has a lot of uncles, but in this context she knows I’m talking about my brothers Pat and Dan.
“No, that wouldn’t be right.”
“Why?”
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “What is Piracy?”
No Spoiler Warning this week. Again. We spent so much time fighting with audio that when the video stream began flaking out we were too grumpy, tired, and frustrated to deal with it. But we should have it all hammered out next week. In the meantime, Mumbles has compiled a list of her top 10 favorite Spoiler Warning Episodes. Go read it. Number 1 will shock you! (It shocked me, anyway. Her #1 is the episode where I basically griefed the entire cast through incompetence.)
But if we’re doing easy-breezy “top 10 list” type contentBecause I got nothin this week, and I’m elbow-deep in the guts of Good Robot right now and don’t have time to make something intelligent. then the least I can do is pitch in. So here is my top ten list of favorite Spoiler Warning episodes:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Top 10 Spoiler Warning”
This week I talk about the whole NVIDIA vs. AMD pissing contest as it applies to the Witcher 3 “HairWorks” feature.
I actually wanted to do a rant on how both companies are staggering morons when it comes to how they name and market their products. But to illustrate how bad they are, you have to explain the naming systems of product lines, and I can never remember how those work because my brain refuses to store large quantities of unmitigated gibberish. I keep trying to educate myself about it, but my eyes glaze over and Istart drooling on myself. Hours later I’ll regain my senses and find myself scrolling through cat pictures on Facebook. It’s so dumb and confusing that I can’t follow it well enough to explain it for the purposes of describing why it’s so dumb and confusing.
This is also why my graphics card is as old as it is. I kind of feel like, if you asking me to put down that kind of money, at the bare minimum you need to make it as simple and as painless for me as possible. People shopping for a new iPhone don’t have to worry about choosing the correct GSM frequency bands. For crying out loud.
Having said all that, I’m delighted at how much things have improved. Back at the turn of the century, I used to need to worry about graphics hardware every two years. Now graphics hardware has a sort of console-like lifespan where you can go four years or so before you need to go through the ordeal of buying a new one. Even nicer is that it’s less painful to be on the low end of the tech curve. Oblivion was a nightmare. I’m running the Witcher 3 on the lowest settings, and it’s all good. The grass ends about ten meters from me, but other than that it looks like Shadow of Mordor from last year.
My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2014.
Obviously they are. Right? Actually, is this another one of those sneaky hard-to-define things?
My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2015.
Who is this imbecile and why is he wandering around Europe unsupervised?
This mess of dross, confusion, and terrible UI design is the storefront the big publishers couldn't beat? Amazing.
What makes this borderline indie title so much better than the AAA juggernauts that came before?
Which would you rather be: A king in the middle ages, or a lower-income laborer in the 21st century?
Do you like electronic music? Do you like free stuff? Are you okay with amateur music from someone who's learning? Yes? Because that's what this is.
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?
His problem isn't that he's dumb, the problem is that he bends the world he inhabits.
T w e n t y S i d e d
