Twenty Sided

By Shamus Posted Thursday Mar 14, 2013

Filed under: Diecast 171 comments

 Diecast #3: Jarenth, PS4, Elder ScrollsPrevious Post

Next PostDiecast #5: SimCity, Saint's Row 4, Tress FX 

We should probably title these things or something. I mean, if we’re going to keep making episodes then at some point we’ll be like, “Wait. Which one did we discuss playing through Half-Life 2: Episode 3? Was that Diecast #230? No, 230 was when we discussed Sony’s inexplicable decision to design the Playstation 5 with a cotton-candy pink case.”

Then again, I have no idea how to title long multi-topic discussions in a memorable way. Screw it. We’ll just kick this problem on down the road and let future-us deal with it.

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Show notes:

00:15 Intro. What’s everyone doing? Shamus is playing Max Payne 3. (I suppose I might as well link to that one Max Payne video before someone beats me to it.) Rutskarn is playing KOTOR2. Chris is playing Perspective. Josh is playing…

17:00 Tomb Raider. The new one. Like, the reboot. This one.

40:00 SimCity. Man, does this story have legs or what? We recorded this on Sunday night, and here on Thursday the follies continue. Sadly, this means a lot of the stuff we discussed or speculated about has now been resolved or rendered moot, only to be replaced by new failures. The latest? Maxis Insider Tells RPS: SimCity Servers Not Necessary.

This reminds me so much of the ages-old BioShock controversy: A polite spokeswoman is way out of her technical depth and saying things that the tech-savvy users prove to be untrue, thus making inflaming the people they were trying to pacify. Those who do not learn from history, etc. (They are also repeating the mistakes of the Diablo III launch and the Assassin’s Creed 2 launch. So, nice going EA. You are the very last idiot to make this particular blunder.)

1:03:30 The Blip.tv story. Here is what Chris posted about it. And here is the original post where I hurled bricks at the company after too many trips through the same advertisement: Blip.tv Sucks. Stay classy, Shamus.

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 #3: Jarenth, PS4, Elder ScrollsPrevious Post

Next PostDiecast #5: SimCity, Saint's Row 4, Tress FX 

171 comments

Fallout 3 EP21: Guy Fawkes Day

By Shamus Posted Wednesday Mar 13, 2013

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 145 comments

 Fallout 3 EP20: Anger ManagementPrevious Post

Next PostFallout 3 EP22: President Evil 

Link (YouTube)

We talked a bit about the Bethesda art style, which is kind of like discussing the flavor of a glass of room-temperature water. For comparison, here is the art style of the original supermutants:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Fallout 3 EP21: Guy Fawkes Day”

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.

 Fallout 3 EP20: Anger ManagementPrevious Post

Next PostFallout 3 EP22: President Evil 

145 comments

Sim Sickly

By Shamus Posted Wednesday Mar 13, 2013

Filed under: Rants 175 comments

 Linux vs. WindowsPrevious Post

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We have reached the point in the crisis where the gaming media is dangerously close to running out of lede paragraph puns and jokey article titles. Sham City? Sim Shitty? Sim Sleazy? SinCity? There’s only so much we can do with the phonics we’re given. If this crisis continues we’ll run out of lame-ass jokes entirely and be forced to come up with proper headlines.

The SimCity story continues to be a mess. Just to outline the basics for those of you who get your gaming news by jogging past people discussing old IGN threads, the story so far is thus: The new SimCity “reboot” released with this always-online stuff that was either DRM or social networking and multiplayer, depending on who you asked and how cynical they were. The servers couldn’t keep up with the player demand, nobody could connect, the game was broken and crashed a lot, cities would revert to some hours-old state without warning, blah blah blah. It’s the same stupid crap that happened when Diablo III released as a multiplayer-only title, only much worse.

We got a few patches, and then more, and eventually Maxis disabled a lot of the multiplayer features just to give the servers a break. Most painfully, they disabled “cheetah” speed, meaning players that run out of money need to spend more time doing nothing while waiting for the next in-game hourly payment to roll in. All of this brought stability at the expense of making the entire online system completely pointless. (But still mandatory!)

But let’s look at some public statements. Keep in mind that this stuff is a couple of days old at this point. If you need up-to-the-minute news then you should know better than to read my blog. I just got around to playing Max Payne 3 this week, for crying out loud.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Sim Sickly”

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.

 Linux vs. WindowsPrevious Post

Next PostAI, CPU Cycles, and Twitter 

175 comments

Fallout 3 EP20: Anger Management

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Mar 12, 2013

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 54 comments

 Dishonored EP7: Have You Lost Your Senses? Previous Post

Next PostFallout 3 EP21: Guy Fawkes Day 

Link (YouTube)

Since I played as a good character, I always cleaned out Paradise Falls. Because that’s what virtuous people do: They murder dozens of evil people and loot their corpses for money. While tripping on drugs. It’s how we make the world a better place.

I like how the slaves can just wander off once their owners are dead even though they have bomb-collars that oh who cares. It’s all written on drool-soaked construction paper and there’s no point in enumerating all its faults.

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.

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54 comments

Experienced Points: Not Greedy, Just Clueless

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Mar 12, 2013

Filed under: Column 114 comments

 Experienced Points: Why the PS4 Doesn't do PS3 GamesPrevious Post

Next PostExperienced Points: Where EA Went Wrong 

I know I’m guilty of bouts of hyperbole. Activision, EA, and Ubisoft are capable of some truly infuriating behaviors, and it’s really tempting to just throw around words like “evil” and “greedy”. EA is a huge, dysfunctional organization that takes in billions of dollars and employs thousands of people. But I think it’s worth noting that their desire to make money isn’t what makes them a bad company. Their problem isn’t greed, but shocking ineptitude.

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: Why the PS4 Doesn't do PS3 GamesPrevious Post

Next PostExperienced Points: Where EA Went Wrong 

114 comments

Thinking About Forums

By Shamus Posted Sunday Mar 10, 2013

Filed under: Notices 249 comments

 Do Not PanicPrevious Post

Next PostDull Technical Stuff WRT Site Performance 

This blog is a very unusual beast. I don’t say this to brag. It’s unusually big for a WordPress blog. (Once sites get this busy, they often move away from blogging software.) There’s an unusual level of “engagement” for a personality-driven blog. (If you’ve got a big blog based around a single person, it’s common to have the comments aimed not at the subject matter of the post itself, but at the author.) But here we’ve got long, detailed discussions between people on all sorts of topics. The comments are busy enough to be interesting but not so busy that you feel like you’re shouting into a hurricane. On top of all this, the whole thing is shockingly civil for an open-comment discussion thread where anyone can join without creating an account.

The point is: We have some sort of delicately balanced ideal here, and I’ve been slow to change things because I don’t want to disturb the mysterious alchemy we have. For years people have been asking me to create forums, and I’ve resisted because I don’t want to harm the blog or make it less fun. This blog has been a big part of my routine for 7.5 years now. It works well and I’m very reluctant to mess with it in a way that might make the thing less fun.

But Shamus, why can’t we have some optional side-forum, just for people who want to talk about other stuff?

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Thinking About Forums”

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.

 Do Not PanicPrevious Post

Next PostDull Technical Stuff WRT Site Performance 

249 comments

Dishonored EP7: Have You Lost Your Senses?

By Shamus Posted Saturday Mar 9, 2013

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 87 comments

 Dishonored EP6: You're a Chicken Now! Previous Post

Next PostFallout 3 EP20: Anger Management 

Link (YouTube)

Thanks again to Jarenth for filling in while I was moving. I’m glad he did such a good job, although I’m kind of disappointed that he did such a good job that nobody missed me. Also, I’ve decided to blame him for the rash of puns on my name, even though I think he’s the only person who was blameless in the matter.

A few things to note because I wasn’t there for the recording:

Samuel still reminds me of Al Pacino.

Anyone notice how Havelock’s pistol is somehow a semi-automatic?

You know, I used the zoom feature all the time at the Hound Pitts, and it never once dawned on me that I was doing it with the mask off. Derp.

I think the problem with the mission briefings is that it doesn’t feel like these guys have enough going on. Running a conspiracy ought to keep you busy. It feels too much like these jokers are hanging out while they wait for you to overthrow the entire country for them.

It kills me that the game gives us audiologs of people that we know and can speak to directly. Audiologs are usually a hack for when direct communication isn’t possible. It’s like the game was afraid of going for too long without the player shanking someone, so most of the characterization was dumped in this non-gameplay ghetto of exposition dumps. Since Corvo has a quasi-dialog wheel, it would have been much better to take some of these audiologs and move their contents into conversation branches. It would still be optional for the impatient, but it would round out our conversations with them and allow the exposition to happen more naturally. It would also fix this layers-of-emotional-removal problem that Chris was talking about.

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.

 Dishonored EP6: You're a Chicken Now! Previous Post

Next PostFallout 3 EP20: Anger Management 

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