Frenetic Pony

Which reminds me, that one of the things that I never liked about GTA4 was how small and restricted it felt. Admittedly part of that was the map being locked until you got through enough of the campaign, but it was also a little small to be honest. Neither is going to be a problem with V though, so woot! Also, these waves: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=0BMm-n4WIC4#t=51s Not the other ones in the rest of the video, but THOSE ones, right there. That's the only time the water is of anything near that quality, next shot it's quite flat the the reflection render target doesn't have nearly the same quality. I'd hazard a guess that COULD be a PC/Next gen console test that someone making the video took some capture from. Maybe.

So I've just about completed the campaign in Castle Storm, and finally played some splitscreen multiplayer. Overall For those wondering, it's a game in which you fling projectiles angry birds style between castles, trying to knock the other persons castle over. But at the same time you and your enemy are both spawning different types of creeps, that will walk across the arena (it's a 2d arena) and knock down the enemies gates, or fight enemy creeps along the way. The first to either steal the enemies flag (knock down their gate, grab the flag with a creep, return it to your gate) or to totally demolish the enemy castle wins. It's got a decent amount of stuff going on. The ballistae angry birds versus castle thing is all physics based, you build your own castle, and your rooms give you bonuses and decide what creeps you can spawn (archer room destroyed? no archer creeps for you, etc.) You've also got spells, including summoning your "hero" which is a kickass creep you control in a slightly castle crashers style to go and kick the enemy creeps ass. You have to balance between destroying the enemy castle and either stealing the enemy flag or at least defending your own. The campaign was entertaining enough for a decent amount of hours, the multiplayer is good for some kicks, and for $15 you could do a lot worse with a lot of games, and not much better with not a whole lot of others. Again it's only out on the 360 right now though. I also bought Gunpoint, and was immediately unimpressed with it. I like the idea of a stealth game where you die almost instantly upon being discovered, but the rest of it just feels flat to me so far. I didn't give it very long at all, and since I DID spend $8 on it I'll be trying again, hopefully I'll get something out of it.

Ooooh I know this as good as anyone! (Ereyday I'm reading da engadget an typin up this in en renderm axence). Root root root! Unless you're getting a stock Android phone (highly recommended) root that shit and use Cyanogen mod! The purpose isn't realy to "power user" but to get the damned updates on time or rather all if ever you can. Also, don't bother with Samsung, only the ignorant tend to go with them (not that they're THAT bad, just not the best), the only reason they've the market share they do is marketing. Their phones are never particcularly well made. The HTC One is a better phone all around, with a better camera, stereo speakers, better build quality, and is just as fast, and you can get it with stock android, meaning every OS update you want is yours to have immediately without rooting your phone or any of that shit. It's too bad HTC didn't catch onto the "advertising" thing and will be closed soon, but with stock android your updates come directly from Google, so that shouldn't bother you. If, on the other hand, you are looking for something like a kickass camera that can replace anything and everything but a high $500+ camera, wait a few months for Sony's new very cool camera phone they're supposed to be revealing soon. 2/3" sensor ftw! Almost everyone uses Sony sensors anyway, but this one is quite a bit larger than any other mobile camera sensors out there, and sensor of for sensor larger is much better. Sony also has a solid reputation for phones, though their specs are usually a bit behind. The other thing to consider is smaller phones. In which case you buy a 4" iphone 5 and call it good. It's a really good all around phone really, and no one makes smaller phones anymore, which makes me mad >: ( The bigger phones feel awful, I'd never go beyond 4.3" I'd really suggest trying some phones out to see how big or small you'd want them. And as the joke goes, no one owns a Windows Phone besides MS employees. And my mom, and me, and my brother (until he smashed his). Point is they're really quite good if app selection isn't terribly your thing. I still like the interface more than Android, and I've used a Nexus 7 extensively. They're also out for a good price, and the Lumia's high end tends to have excellent cameras.

Here's this really, really great interview with Molyneux on WHY it's free to play on mobile: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/05/30/molyneux-on-godus-surprise-publisher-free-to-play/ Basically, after having so much trouble dealing with the backend and making any money of Curiosity, he's decided that they don't want to deal with that on Godus and so will just have someone else do it for them, which is where the publisher comes in. It's a really smart decision, and definitely the right one, but it also reveals the downside of Kickstarter Projects. You still have a stupid, uninformed boss of sorts, but now that "boss" is all the people that backed you rather than vomit spewing corporate Satan. I.E. if you're doing a Kickstarter you really have to learn to check what you say and how you say it. Something Molyneux isn't good at of course. Still, if this interview had been the press release I don't think there'd have been any uproar whatsoever.

Oh fuck yes, I want to do a video on youtube for this I think, maybe try one tonight. Sony and MS are caught in a near perfect prisoners dilemma. Outcome A. Both block used games, both get more new games sales and their cut, both benefit. Outcome B. One blocks used games, the other doesn't, more customers go towards the one that doesn't, that one benefits. Outcome C. Neither block used games, neither benefits. Of course it's not that picture perfect. Microsoft could go through with its "we get a cut of all used games but publishers/devs don't" thing, in which case publishers/devs could say "Fuck you Microsoft" and choose to only release as digital on the Xbone, no used games at all. Or Sony's possible ploy of letting the devs/publishers decide how the DRM works, in which case no used games because why should they give a fuck about used games customers? Or maybe, maybe Microsoft's scheme goes through but devs/publishers get a cut too, crashing the profit margins of used to the point of uselesness and folding gamestop et. al. anyway. Or maybe, maybe something I haven't thought of yet. The point is it's a hugely complex decision, that for both parties would best be made once the other party has already made their decision. Considering their releases might be like a week apart from each other possibly, it's sort of like a game of chicken playing out.

So here's this trailer for this game I'm going to buy because it's indie as fuck: My question is: What is that classical piece that's playing at the end? Starts about 1:23 in, the piano solo. I know it's quite famous, and I don't know the name of it.

The tradeoff is not social capital, but time and uncertainty. You are trading your money now for a game that hasn't been built yet quite a ways in the future; whereas buying a game that's already out is a tradeoff between a potentially higher price for something accessible immediately and with complete knowledge of the product already available. Anyone suffering from "Kickstarter fatigue" (as I am a bit) is probably doing so because A. The mental realization of how long you have to wait for the game to actually appear is kicking in. B. the payoff for that wait hasn't come for just about anyone yet. If the payoff B > A the long wait and uncertainty, then Kickstarter will be around for a good while yet. If on the other hand the majority of people find that A < B (or even that they didn't like the game) then Kickstarter is finished. We'll just have to wait to find out.

I haven't completed it, but I am playing, and quite enjoying Castle Storm. It's an odd combo of worms and controlled tower defense. And so far it's just plain fun. I like shooting things with my ballista in an angry birds-ish fashion. I like mashing a button to spawn my own creeps, I like spawning my hero for a bit and smashing enemy creeps in the face. And that's about all you do, and it's fun and not a shooter (sorry Metro Last Light) and I guess that's all I want from a video game at the moment. It's a downloadable title only out on the 360, so there's that. But whatever. It's got competitive play which I've yet to try but hope to do so tonight. - As for Revelations, that game wasn't worth playing for free. I was done with Assassin's Creed two thirds of the way through 2, and Brotherhood and Revelations were approximately the exact same thing so far as I was concerned. Hoping AC4 will bring something nice, but I'm really, reeeeeally disappointed it's an AC game and not just a pirate game. I want to be a pirate damn it!

I'm excited for the Banner Saga, which I backed... but not for this so uhmmmm. Hmm. Loved the video though.

"All the money" in films, while screw Michael Bay in general (Ok, I wanted to go see Pain and Gain, but never did.) But there's 1 really good big action superhero movie this year, in terms of writing. Iron Man 3, and thank you Hollywood for somehow putting Shane Black as a writer. He was a co-writer, true. The other, not Shane Black portion of the script was balls and all the things wrong with the movie. But the Shane Black portions of the script. Robert Downey Jr. snarking the hell out of hollywood cliches and etc. Well hell yes! It's not going to change anything overall in Hollywood. It's not going to change anything in the games industry. But it will probably get us a new Shane Black written movie, and to that I say YES! And if there's one thing wrong with the games industry that the film industry get's right in comparison, it's that somehow, some way, sometimes the right guy like Shane Black, or Peter Jackson in 1997, or George Lucas in 1975 get's a bunch of money to do something crazy and new and weird. And in the game industry someone asking for that either get's their game pulled ala Molyneux and Milo or just straight up fired. And so, while I'm not sticking up for the film industry giving Will Smith and M. Fucking Shitwhatever money for "After Earth" while some script with much greater potential goes to waste; I am saying there's still the occasional time in Hollywood when something out of the norm gets a lot of money, and that's not something that happens in games.

Super Smash Bros Melee. Me and my brother 100% it within a year of having it. To be clear, this is a rather difficult game to 100%. Hidden stage and characters, tons of single player challenges, and the big one is that there's these little collectible trophies, about 300 of them. You need to complete every event, every match, every little thing, and then you need to get some from a vending machine, which spits out random trophies for coins you earn by playing more. We got to 100%, and then he brought the gamecube memory card over to a friends house, and accidentally brought the wrong one back. A savegame not even nearly 100% was on it. We shrugged and 100% the thing again. Years later, after not playing it for a while, and being rather rusty, I could still match up to tournament players while they were "teching" (cheating) and I wasn't (because it was lame). Easily matched over a thousand hours on that game. Which is odd, because I don't really enjoy any other fighting series except Smash Bros. That being said, Fable 2 is a not too distant second. I absolutely adored that game, and I only put 50 hours into it instead of over a thousand, thus hour for hour being my favorite game of all time. I adored collecting every bit of the tons of treasure scattered about the world, exploring every nook and cranny of this beautiful and detailed game, reading every laughter inducing book, getting every NPC possible to fall in love with me and follow me around like a creepy love zombie, and playing dress up for hours with my character (a woman), making her a fancy pirate or a sexy bandit or whatever. Which makes Fable 3 a close second to Spore as my most disappointing game of all time.

"Make it so... you handsome devil you."

The one where Halo 1 had the best local co-op shooter campaign in ever and Halo 3 sucked. Get past the art and Halo 1 is simply an amazing, fantastic campaign when played co-op. It also had the best multiplayer of any Halo in most every way, the Halo 1 pistol is still one of the funnest weapons in any multiplayer shooter history ever, but they removed because it wasn't "balanced". Even though it was fun as hell to sit on Hang'em High and just snipe people from all the way across the map.

So how is this made? Apparently pot isn't water soluable, and I've never heard of it made that way. I've lived in the pot capital of the US. It's not in Colorado, it's a town called Arcata in California. Pot is basically legal there despite not being "legal" in the state. But people smoke it in public all the time, even the cops. Going to college there involved the orientation specifically telling all the new students that you couldn't smoke it on campus because the campus was partially funded by the feds. There's even a holiday (April 20th) essentially dedicated to smoking pot in public. Yet never in all that time did I hear of it as tea. How would you go about making such? I've never even tried pot (my drug, caffeine, is perfectly legal) but I'm interested anyway. The people I know in the coffee shop I'm in just suggested things like milk or etc. for dissolving it as such. Anyone know for sure?

It's not that, much more Borderlands and much less MMO. So far as I can tell it's Borderlands and Halo mashed up as gameplay in a kind of Star Warsy universe. With "Borderlands" part coming in with like, 8-16 player multiplayer, auto co-op matchmaking, and a big "common" area or something. Which would sound fantastic if the last really good game that Bungie made was Halo 1.

Hey, I was the first person on earth (so far as I can tell) that's ever suggested that used games could create an artificial price floor. As someone that really enjoys economics I was proud of that, so there In other Microsoft News, on rep claims this next generation of consoles could add up to a billion console sales total: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-05-25-microsoft-next-gen-could-hit-1-billion-consoles-sold I assume he said that while smoking crack and then at the end went

I didn't say ANYTHING about competitive pricing, I said "the end of boxed retail sales". Huge difference there, you guys are the ones going on and on about competitiveness, which I wrote a fantastic blog about a while ago: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JohnathonSwift/20120417/168732/The_Economics_of_Used_Games.php Tl;Dr used games don't drive down the price of gaming a whole lot. You can see the very effect I've mentioned shown in the PC industry as Steam Sales and Amazon PC Deal of the Day stuff. Without used games threatening to undercut your pricing most every developer on the planet feels free to once in a while drastically slash prices for their older, and even on occasion newer games, knowing that they're the ones that will be guaranteed to benefit either way without those cut price games flooding the used market later. I'm not sure Microsoft, which in this case I will suspect to me Micro$oft, will be very amenable to a huge digital only sale now and again. But Sony seems much more flexible. I can see them setting up annual sales ala steam with huge discounts, or even doing that AND allowing and even encouraging publishers to set their prices to whatever they want whenever they want.

Game development cost is too high already, moving to less used games and higher margin digital distribution will certainly line Activision's pockets from Call of Duty sales, but it'll help keep up all those too high end budgets from games that don't sell 10 million copies each time. It's certainly a tradeoff, I'm not going to pretend that I don't buy used games and even pirate a title once in a blue moon (hey, as far as dev's are concerned it's the same thing as a used game). But it's still a tradeoff with benefits for us, the consumer, and not all just going towards the producer.

I really don't see why they're bothering at all. to be honest. Do you know what Steam did almost single handedly? Destroy the entire retail sales market for PC games. It's basically gone, there's probably 80% of all games going through digital sales now on the PC. I can easily see the same thing happening over the course of a few years with these new consoles. I'm sure there's a vocal minority, which some of you on here will be, that will shout about it until your blue in the face. It hasn't stopped an ever increasing number of PC games to go digital only, nor will it stop the trend in the console space. Though I suppose with this policy in place, jacking up the price of used games and destroying Amazon and Ebay as outlets, it will just cause the same thing to happen all the faster. Say goodbye Gamestop, I used you but I'm not going to miss you.

I'm still at the beginning, but this is a good game! I guess "very high" and 1080p with v-sync is good enough, but damn does this game look good and I'm tempted to see what even higher settings do (is there higher?). Still, the performance they've gotten out of my somewhat aging machine (a GTX 460 1 gig and a Phenom X3) is excellent. The one downside it's had so far is one that every shooter in ever has had. Please, if there is one thing shooters can do "next gen" then please, please have good AI. Enemy AI that will look farther than 5 feet from where the body they found was. That will spread out and call to each other. That will remember where their allies have gone and realize "oh shit, Nyetsky Russian friend hasn't returned from down that corridor for 5 minutes, something might be up!" I mean, just track allied position by sight and voice calls, there's enough ram, and if they're in an "investigate area" branch and don't return to "normal patrol" branch after a while, then "call allies" and "investigate area" that the ally was doing yah? Other than the typical braindead AI enemies it's quite fun!

It's not interested in A LOT of people or business. "No self publishing for indies" *takes a look at the top 10 selling game on Steam currently "Oh look 8 of them are indie titles!" And considering Nintendo's strategy for console dominance: I think Sony has to be feeling at least somewhat confident in its position at the moment.

Another blog post: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JohnathonSwift/20130521/192728/Microsofts_big_data_driven_misstep.php This time on how and why Microsoft screwed up their Xbox One reveal as a marketing thing. Tl;Dr: A $400 box that you can Skype chat and watch TV on is ridiculously, stupidly expensive. A $400 box that plays great new games, and that can also happen to let you watch TV and skype chat on if you want, seems pretty cool.

George Lucas Disney is ruining Star Wars! Well someone has to ruin it. I suppose if it gets "more ruined" that means it's not been totally "ruined" yet. Not until Lucas builds his time machine and goes back to replace the original trilogy and the 90's-KOTOR games with crap as well. Who am I kidding? I'm still an optimist. Season 4 of MLP will be great, the new Star Wars trilogy will be awesome, and the world is made of sun and rainbows. Take that world, you'll never crush my optimism, neverrrrr! But who's making this besides "Executive Producers" which is Hollywood code for "I get paid to not do much on this show!" Not that it matters, its Disney. Phineas and Ferb was there one good cartoon of the last, 5 years, and even that has outstayed its originality by about two years now. Even my optimism isn't enough to battle this monster of mediocrity.

Yes, this product is designed for idiots. We acknowledge that idiots exist, will be impressed by being able to alt tab, and buy this. Doesn't mean we can't already make fun of them.