T w e n t y S i d e d
Michael Crichton, creator of Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park and ER, has died at 66.
So long Crichton, thanks for all the great yarns. Especially that dinosaur thing.
Interactive Fiction:
Feedback Parser
Playing Phantom of the Arcade within the context of a web page has me thinking about the new things we could be doing with interactive fiction that simply weren’t possible in the heyday of text adventures.
IF is an interesting game type. They player isn’t just working to complete the story, but to experiment with the gameworld and read what the author has to say. Being stuck in IF can be just as rewarding as moving forward, provided the game has interesting things to say about it.
For example: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Interactive Fiction:
Feedback Parser”
Silent Hill Origins Part 5: At The Movies
Our hero, Travis Grady, has just escaped the horrors of the Silent Hill sanitarium. He leaves now, probably in search of even worse ones. That’s just the kind of guy he is. (Dumb.)
A working car? Hmmmm. Nope. Can't think of how that could be useful. Oh well.
Outside the sanitarium Travis finds a car with the engine running. He quickly realizes that using a car would be the coward’s way of getting around a city of lurching abominations. And we’ve already established that Travis is a magnificent dummy and not a coward. He won’t even try the door or make up some excuse about it being locked. Time for another hike across town.
(Also: Travis has quite a collection of tire irons tucked away in whatever dimensional pocket he keeps his inventory. The hospital and the sanitarium each had a rather perplexing number of them laying about. Strangely, there isn’t a tire iron in the trunk of this car.)
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Silent Hill Origins Part 5: At The Movies”
Stolen Pixels #35:
Total Rewind 2
The story of our time-manipulating prince has now been extended via a sequel. In a perfect world I would have made this a three-parter, but it worked best as two strips. Director’s commentary (punchline spoilers) follow:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Stolen Pixels #35:
Total Rewind 2″
Silent Hill Origins Part 4: Dang Kids
We rejoin trucker Travis Grady as he continues his journey to transcend stupidity itself. Last time he was wandering around the sanitarium, bashing monsters and developing his repertoire of dumb looks. Let’s see how it goes…
There are two new monsters to face here, and the differences between them are instructive:
Sweet mother of NASCAR, this gul-durned shadow is kickin' my backside somthin' fierce. (Sorry about the image quality here, but it is sort of hard to really capture a good shot of a shadow of an invisible man in a dark room while it's kicking your ass. Just trust me, this sucker is freaky.)
The first is a remnant. It looks like a not-particularly-comfortable restraining device. It seems to float through the air as if the wearer was invisible, but when you sweep the flashlight beam over it the thing casts a humanoid shadow on the wall and you can see its crazed movements and flailing limbs. Naturally the closer you get the larger the projected shadow will appear. And naturally this will freak you the hell out if you’re not ready for it.
The other monster is the carrion, a big lumpy… monster thing. Online guides say it looks like roadkill, but given how you need to fight the sucker at a distance and your flashlight beam has the coverage of a dinner plate, I’ve never actually gotten a good look at it. But this seems to be an exception to the rule that obscuring the monster makes it more frightening. I’ve never been all that scared of it. It just looks like a big lump to me. A big, mean lump with a cheap-ass lunge attack that can knock off half your health before you can say, “When was the last time I saved, anyway?”
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Silent Hill Origins Part 4: Dang Kids”
XKCD vs. DRM FTW LOL
(Sorry about the post title.)
XKCD had wisdom for us a few weeks ago, and I’ve been remiss in not linking it:
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In a closed society where everybody’s guilty, the only crime is getting caught.
-Hunter S. Thompson
Halloween Annex
I don’t know what I was thinking last week. I somehow imagined I’d be able to cram all of my survival horror / Halloween content into a single week? The Silent Hill: Origins series alone turned out to be six posts long, which wouldn’t fit in a single week even if I skipped the Wednesday GM Advice and even if that business with EA and DRM hadn’t come up. And this doesn’t even take into account all the other survival horror stuff I wanted to post about.
Some of this is my own fault for going overboard with the Origins series. Really, I could have posted my final thoughts, a couple of funny screenshots, and called it a day. But lack of restraint in writing about a game in which its chief flaw is lack of restraint seems fitting.
We have a quote around here (which I’m pretty sure is lifted from MST3K) that is appropriate for the writing this week:
From the people who brought you that last stuff, it’s… more of the same!
From The Archives:
Dead or Alive 5 Last Round
I'm not surprised a fighting game has an absurd story. I just can't figure out why they bothered with the story at all.
Silent Hill Origins
Here is a long look at a game that tries to live up to a big legacy and fails hilariously.
Fixing Match 3
For one of the most popular casual games in existence, Match 3 is actually really broken. Until one developer fixed it.
The Middle Ages
Would you have survived in the middle ages?
Video Compression Gone Wrong
How does image compression work, and why does it create those ugly spots all over some videos and not others?
Spoiler Warning
A video Let's Play series I collaborated on from 2009 to 2017.
Dead Island
A stream-of-gameplay review of Dead Island. This game is a cavalcade of bugs and bad design choices.
Crash Dot Com
Back in 1999, I rode the dot-com bubble. Got rich. Worked hard. Went crazy. Turned poor. It was fun.
Skylines of the Future
Cities: Skylines is bound to have a sequel sooner or later. Where can this series go next, and what changes would I like to see?
Starcraft: Bot Fight
Let's do some scripting to make the Starcraft AI fight itself, and see how smart it is. Or isn't.