PAX Coverage: Tera

By Mumbles Posted Thursday Sep 9, 2010

Filed under: Nerd Culture 56 comments

TeraPAX.jpg

When Josh and I started to divvy up the games at PAX that we were going to cover, the line between our interests and experience became very clear. I’ve always been on the action side of the spectrum, while Josh knows a lot more about strategy games and MMOs. For that reason, it might come to a surprise that Tera was my favorite game that I played at PAX. This Korean made MMO was passed into the hands of American developers for Western distribution and has the potential to be a serious contender with Guild Wars 2 and Old Republic. It’s beautiful to look at and the combat is full of action and fun. In fact, I’m certain Tera will pull in gamers like me who aren’t attracted to the typical MMO targeting combat system. And, no one is more surprised about that than me.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “PAX Coverage: Tera”

 


 

Twenty Sided @ PAX Part 2

By Shamus Posted Thursday Sep 9, 2010

Filed under: Video Games 41 comments

Here is the second half of our conversation about what Josh & Mumbles saw at PAX.

Hello, person from the future. This space used to have an embed from the video hosting site Viddler. The video is gone now. If you want to find out why and laugh at Viddler in the process, you can read the entire silly story for yourself.

At any rate, the video is gone. Sorry. On the upside, we're gradually re-posting these old videos to YouTube. Check the Spoiler Warning page to see the full index.

I managed to forget to turn off my push-to-talk sound, which means there are faint beeps in the background. And the segment ran way long. And I sidetracked us in a few spots. Which, as the host, is the opposite of my job. Ah well. If we did these more often, I’d get good at them.

Spoiler Warning should return next week.

 


 

Mass Effect 2: Mordin Solus Part 3

By Shamus Posted Wednesday Sep 8, 2010

Filed under: Game Reviews 199 comments

Here we are with part 3 of our history of pretend stuff that never happened. This series is eventually going to talk about the character Dr. Mordin Solus, but to make sense of his story I wanted to first make sense of history. And make the preceding cheesy pun.

The Genophage

me_genophage.jpg

The Krogan were breeding like crazy. Left unchecked, they could wreck the galaxy. They weren’t driven by malice or greed. Like locusts, they were just doing what their species did.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Mass Effect 2: Mordin Solus Part 3”

 


 

Stolen Pixels #224: An Incredible Value

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Sep 7, 2010

Filed under: Column 95 comments

Here is a comic about the Xbox Live price hike.

So my “two gamers on a couch” has become my go-to thing when I don’t have a game to fuel my jokes. This happens now and again with a lot of comic-making folk. (I’ll leave it to the comments for people to cite examples. Would be bad form to do so here.) These jokes are easy to do and work well [enough] to fill the void when I’m low on material. Which is always the case when I’m not consuming games that can feed the comic mill. Breen is also good for this, but I don’t want him taking over too much.

If you’re curious, here is what I’m playing these days:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Stolen Pixels #224: An Incredible Value”

 


 

Twenty Sided @ PAX TRANSCRIPT

By Shamus Posted Monday Sep 6, 2010

Filed under: Nerd Culture 31 comments

Huge thanks goes to reader Gale, who typed out the transcript of our entire 40+ minute PAX interview. If you can’t watch the video, then here is what you missed:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Twenty Sided @ PAX TRANSCRIPT”

 


 

Twenty Sided @ PAX

By Shamus Posted Monday Sep 6, 2010

Filed under: Nerd Culture 70 comments

I got together with Josh and Mumbles on Sunday morning and we talked about what they saw at PAX on Saturday.

Note that we recorded this show with the intention that it would be an audio offering. But then we found out that video services are – for whatever reason – less of a headache then audio hosting services. So we decided to record audio and put it up as video. I mean, we can just stick a screenshot in there or something, right? Then I got the bright idea of spicing it up with photographs from the show. Then I realized that I had ten photos and forty five minutes of audio to cover, and the photos weren’t even related to the games we were discussing. So then I figured I’d just grab some trailers to fill the time.

Seven hours later I had this big presentation thing. And I’m still not happy with it.

There is some sort of equilibrium at work here. Josh and Mumbles saved me a few hours by making all this content, and my workload immediately expanded to fill the void.

Hello, person from the future. This space used to have an embed from the video hosting site Viddler. The video is gone now. If you want to find out why and laugh at Viddler in the process, you can read the entire silly story for yourself.

At any rate, the video is gone. Sorry. On the upside, we're gradually re-posting these old videos to YouTube. Check the Spoiler Warning page to see the full index.

It’s important to note that I didn’t make any effort to line the video up with what was being said. However, some of the on-screen visuals during the Tera discussion were really unfortunate. Once I realized this, it seemed like it would be cheating to fix this by rearranging the footage. So, yes. Very much aware of the ironic visuals during that discussion.

Having said that, I think I’m more excited about Tera than any of the other stuff we covered. I’ve been anxious for a more action-flavored MMO for a long time. And it looks fantastic.

 


 

PAX Day Two: Operation Face Punch

By Mumbles Posted Sunday Sep 5, 2010

Filed under: Nerd Culture 46 comments

vegasPAX.jpg

Well hello, internet. Day two of PAX has been wrestled, put into submission and then shook down for lunch money. Josh is currently nursing a terrible foot injury from all the bunny hopping, so I’m here to give you lovely people the run down of Saturday. For those who don’t know who I am, my name is Mumbles and I’m the newest addition to the Spoiler Warning team. I also punched a guy in the face today, but we’ll get to that in a second.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “PAX Day Two: Operation Face Punch”