T w e n t y S i d e d
Hangout December the 13th: FRIDAY THE 13TH OH NO
Tonight, December the 13th at 7:30 Pacific Standard (Californian) time, Josh and I will be doing a hangout. Who do I mean by I? Well, it’s me. Mumbles. There might be guest stars. There might be drunk gaming. The only thing we really know is that it’ll be a lot of making fun of Josh.
Come see what horrible shenanigans we can get up to on a Friday the 13th! Have a fun night of watching someone play video games whilst chatting with other video game enthusiasts. A post will go up when we start streaming with links, free food and pictures of hot wrestlers. Okay, mostly hot wrestlers.
Diecast #38: Frozen, No Man’s Sky, and Rambling
We usually do a little warm-up before the show. We talk for a bit and get our brains thinking about games. But about ten minutes into the warm-up we realized we were basically doing the show, so we started recording. No plan. No designated host. No timer. The result is two hours of rambling and confusion.
You’re welcome.
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Hosts: Rutskarn, Josh, Chris, and Shamus.
Show notes:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Diecast #38: Frozen, No Man’s Sky, and Rambling”
Batman Arkham Origins: Over-Analysis Part 3
I want to stress that the game isn’t nearly as bad as it might seem in these first three entries. Remember that we’re deliberately zooming in on stuff that WBGM changed and seeing how it worked and how it compared to the original Arkham Games.
Last time we talked about a change that probably resulted from giving the same task to a different art team. This time we’re talking about a change that someone made on purpose…
Combat
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The core gameplay of the Arkham series involves large brawls against groups of mooks. You hit a guy, then spin-kick the guy behind you, then punch the guy behind him, then stun a forth, then back to the first guy for a follow-up. The longer you chain strikes together, the faster you go and the more damage you do. If you stop moving or someone hits you, then the combo is broken and you have to start over. It’s trivial to build up a big combo in the early stages of the game when you can punch dudes in any order, but then you start running into special foes. A guy with body armor needs to be stunned before you can strike him. A guy with a shield can only be attacked by jumping on his head. A guy with a stun baton can only be attacked from behind. If you fail at any of these and attack somebody in the wrong way, your combo ends and Batman slows down.
And then there’s countering. In order to keep the combo going, you have to counter incoming attacks. When a mook is about to hit you, warning lines appear over his head. You have about a second to hit the counter button, which will cause Batman to block and counter-attack the mook. If you’re too slow, you get hit. Batman can do this counter at any time. Even if he’s winding up to punch some else, he’ll interrupt that attack to do the counter. One of the great achievements of the Batman series is that this transition looks pretty seamless.
Except…
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Batman Arkham Origins: Over-Analysis Part 3”
Uncle Rutskarn Says: It’s Time to Get Hyped for Aunty Paladin
Aunty’s Back With a Vengeance
Hey everyone, it’s Rutskarn, and I think we can agree I don’t spend nearly enough time sleep-deprived and humiliated in front of an international audience. This is a problem some of my cooler friends share, and the reason we’ve decided to hold the third annual Aunty Paladin RPG and Kid-Helping Extravaganza–the best reason to use the internet since Ebay ran out of Ernest Borgnine memorabilia. The stream launches at 8:00 AM PST, December 16th, and will be going until…well, that’s up to you.
There’ll be another post later on talking about some of the games we’ll play, but there are some orders of business to take care of right now. First I’ll explain what Aunty Paladin is, just in case this is your first rodeo. If you were around the past two years, you can skip that part. Secondly, I’ll announce the contest that all of you should be entering into right now. Thirdly, I’ll give everyone a chance to jointly and democratically screw me over in the manner of your choosing. Finally, I’ll tell you how to make me love you with undying, tender, optionally-platonic passion. And on that sobering note, let’s begin.
What is Aunty Paladin? Can I Eat It?
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Uncle Rutskarn Says: It’s Time to Get Hyped for Aunty Paladin”
Metro 2033 EP17: Fear the Future
Link (YouTube) |
And so the story ends. This games accomplishes a rare thing: It concludes a story while also setting up a sequel, and it does so without without any retcon or cliffhanger shenanigans.
Note what an odd beast this is: The “good” ending – that is, the happy one – isn’t the canonical one. Yes, the good ending doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it didn’t bug me because it doesn’t feel real to me. It feels like this odd fan-fiction alternate ending. I suppose it is. In the proper ending you blow the Dark Ones away.
In either ending, note how the Metro society hasn’t solved their original problem. We began the game with the knowledge that monster attacks are increasing, and that someday they will overwhelm the humans. We came here to kill the Dark Ones because we thought they were the cause. Now we know (?) that this isn’t the case. So what then? You set out to resolve the monster problem, and in the proper ending you kill a quasi-innocent third party and in the alternate ending you don’t. Humanity is still screwed either way. The annihilation of the Dark Ones is the result of Humanity lashing out and grasping for any course of action that might give them hope.
The strange cutscene camera cuts are confusing and needless. The gunplay eventually gets old. The gas mask system is an interesting idea that leads to game-killing failure states. The Nazis vs. Commies war is too overblown and under-justified to work. The dual-ending system is obtuse and requires a lot of fussy effort to get an ending that doesn’t make sense.
Despite all this, I admire the game. Metro 2033 stumbled slightly in execution, but it stumbled while trying new things. I think it’s worth a look.
Batman Arkham Origins: Over-Analysis Part 2
Requisite fanboy shield: I’m going to nitpick the game quite a bit here. This does not mean the game is bad or that you shouldn’t like it. This is an exercise in comparing different art teams and design approaches. Rocksteady made the first two games, WBGM made Batman: Origins, and I find it interesting to see a property being handed off like this. Some of my complaints will seem small or trivial, but they’re part of a larger point that I’m making. It pains me to have to waste a paragraph on this, but I can either put this disclaimer here, or put it in the comments when someone freaks out because you’re claerly a hater who just wants to nitpick every little ting b/c this game is hella fun for true fans and besides it scored good on Metacritic so you must be a bad journalist so STFU because you couldnt do any better.
What I’m NOT going to nitpick: I’m not going to fuss over voice acting, continuity, the story, or Bat-Lore. I know that’s usually the kind of stuff I’m on about, but that’s not what I find interesting about this game. Like I said last time: I think the “origins” idea is a result of the requirements created by the previous games. I think Rocksteady kind of painted WBGM into a corner story-wise, and a lot of story-based criticism would wind up as some sort of extended blame game between the two developers.
Instead, let’s focus on mechanical and artistic changes. I have a big list of items that I want to talk about. Some are good, some are bad. I don’t think I’m going to cover them in any particular order. And today’s entry is only one item. Let’s talk about…
Environment Design
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| You can tell we’re on a ship because there’s a 3.5 meter blade slowly pushing air out of this dead-end metal box and into the corridor, and it’s got a J.J. Abrams brand LENS FLARE™ light behind it. Just like on a real ship! |
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Batman Arkham Origins: Over-Analysis Part 2”
From The Archives:
A Star is Born
Remember the superhero MMO from 2009? Neither does anyone else. It was dumb. So dumb I was compelled to write this.
Mass Effect 3 Ending Deconstruction
Did you dislike the ending to the Mass Effect trilogy? Here's my list of where it failed logically, thematically, and tonally.
Quakecon 2011 Keynote Annotated
An interesting but technically dense talk about gaming technology. I translate it for the non-coders.
Autoblography
The story of me. If you're looking for a picture of what it was like growing up in the seventies, then this is for you.
Good to be the King?
Which would you rather be: A king in the middle ages, or a lower-income laborer in the 21st century?
The Best of 2016
My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2016.
Twelve Years
Even allegedly smart people can make life-changing blunders that seem very, very obvious in retrospect.
The Gradient of Plot Holes
Most stories have plot holes. The failure isn't that they exist, it's when you notice them while immersed in the story.
Who Broke the In-Game Economy?
Why are RPG economies so bad? Why are shopkeepers so mercenary, why are the prices so crazy, and why do you always end up a gazillionaire by the end of the game? Can't we just have a sensible balanced economy?
MMO Population Problems
Computers keep getting more powerful. So why do the population caps for massively multiplayer games stay about the same?