T w e n t y S i d e d
Dear fellow Netflix customers,
I know that steel wool DVD cozy you saw at Wal-Mart was a real bargain, but please stop using it.
Thanks,
Shamus Young
Seven Springs, Part One
This is a true story. Bits of it are kind of strange, but I’m not making this up.
My memory of this time is a bit grainy. The tracking is off and I’ve taped over parts of it. I’ve forgotten the names of nearly everyone, and for the sake of the story I’ve filled in those names with inaccurate replacements. Other names have been changed for the usual reasons. But all of the key details are true.
Part One: Naked Girls and A Hotel-Sized Prank.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Seven Springs, Part One”
I have to go Wii
Stipulated: The title of this post is hopelessly lame and grounds for a beating. My hope is that the effort required to track me down and administer said beating will discourage you from doing so.
Fledge has a post talking about why he plans on getting a Wii. Yeah. Everthing he said.
To which I add: The price of the Xbox and PS3 put them way, way out of my reach. The prices hover somewhere between comedy and robbery. I know they are packed with magical hardware that can make the best darn pixels you’ve ever seen, and I’ve heard one of them contains a Blu-Ray matrix reportedly stolen right from the holodeck of the Enterprise, but at the root of it the thing is still a toy, and I can’t think about spending that much for a toy.
He mentions the educational benefits of the system. I would add that the thing is also good for motivating kids to learn to read. We have a Gamecube now, and I’m very pleased with it. My girls (now six and eight) very much wanted to read what was being said to them in games like Animal Crossing. Many, many times I heard, “Can I get / play this game daddy?” to which I would reply, “Once you can read it.” My six year old will sit there for quite a while trying parse what the characters are saying to her in Mario Sunshine. She wants to read it, and she works a it of her own free will, and thinks of that as playtime.
Having a large library of family-friendly games helps as well. I’d rather she learn to read stuff like, “Press B to be my friend” as opposed to “Press triangle to perform a disembowel move.” Not that I have anything against games which engage in a little disemboweling. I have many such games like that which I enjoy very much. But if I’m going to get one of these toys I like to make sure it has games for everyone to play.
So, I can pay $600 for a toy for myself, or I can spend $250 for a toy for the whole family. There is just no contest here.
I worry that the PS3 and XBox will find themselves fighting over the narrow hardcore gamer market. Add to this the shortages of their systems at launch, and it looks like the Wii is ready to kick butt. I could be wrong, but either way it will be fascinating to see how these systems do over the Christmas season.
Spamusement
In the comments of this post, BeckoningChasm points us to Spamusement, a webcomic that takes the titles of email spam and turns them into amusing cartoons. We’ve all seen emails with stupid titles like “It’s cheating, but it works!“, or “Your Life Ins. Company PRAYS you will NEVER SEE this“
Brilliant stuff. A few of my favorites so far:
Women change your life
Personalized Letters from Santa
Amazing Software Types While You Talk
And the best for last:
DM of the Rings XXXII:
Fire Safety
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Scrapland
I’m milling around the mall today and I spot Scrapland in the bargain bin for $4.99. I’m thinking to myself: I avoided this game on purpose when it was new. Why was that again? Annoying missions? Erm. Dumb plot? I don’t think so. Ah well, you can’t go wrong for a fiver. Even if it sucks.
I get it home and make with the installing. Once it’s all done I try to run the game. It says I need to reboot to finish installing the “Protection System”. Ah DANGIT!
Now I remember why I’d been avoiding it. Now it’s too late.
Note to American McGee and the goofs at Enlight software: Nobody wants to steal your lackluster game. Get over yourselves.
DM of the Rings XXXI:
Familiar Lamentations
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Players are always in a hurry to reach town. Once there, they will be in even more of a hurry to leave.
From The Archives:
Wolfenstein II
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?
In Defense of Crunch
Crunch-mode game development isn't good, but sometimes it happens for good reasons.
Trekrospective
A look back at Star Trek, from the Original Series to the Abrams Reboot.
Stolen Pixels
A screencap comic that poked fun at videogames and the industry. The comic has ended, but there's plenty of archives for you to binge on.
The Best of 2018
I called 2018 "The Year of Good News". Here is a list of the games I thought were interesting or worth talking about that year.
Please Help I Can’t Stop Playing Cities: Skylines
What makes this borderline indie title so much better than the AAA juggernauts that came before?
The Best of 2013
My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2013.
The Best of 2017
My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2017.
The Plot-Driven Door
You know how videogames sometimes do that thing where it's preposterously hard to go through a simple door? This one is really bad.
Internet News is All Wrong
Why is internet news so bad, why do people prefer celebrity fluff, and how could it be made better?