TychoCelchuuu

One of the interesting things about that Chris guy is how often he uses the phrase "in no way." One of my goals for Objective Game Reviews is to write all the reviews in an 'authoritative,' objective sounding "voice," and I do it because I have in mind people like that Chris who think there are ways to review games, things they expect to see in an objective review that pisses them off when it isn't there. That's one of the reasons I think the site is so successful as a satire: the reviews don't tip their hand at all because they stick to a weird, overly clinical use of language. Chris, though, departs from this for his objective review, because as an aspiring game journalist he's also really worried about being a good writer, and a lot of people think "good writing" means loading up with descriptive adjectives and pat cliches in precisely the way Chris does when he writes his review. That's one of the ultimate jokes of Objective Game Reviews - my reviews (our reviews, really) read differently from what someone like Chris would write because we're doing our best to highlight the gulf between what we do and what an actual legitimate game reviewer does. Chris tries to bridge that gap because he thinks he can do what a real game reviewer does but also be objective, and the result is the train wreck that we get from him. In other news, someone who sent me a review code of their iOS game to review also told me that my review of Analogue: A Hate Story sold them on the game. That felt pretty good.

FWIW he emailed that to me too. I responded with this: And he wrote back: At this point basically every interaction I have with people that involves this site just reinforces my feeling that it needs to exist.

"Seriously, you're the worst type of games writer..."

But it's still basically correct to say "bespoke" in that context, isn't it? "Bespoke" means "custom-made for a certain situation," and that's what specific authored content (vs something procedural or whatever) is in the context of video games. You probably have a Gravatar or whatever.

The "Congrats Nick" and the "Congrats Nick."

Chris doesn't have a unique definition of bespoke, does he?

Luxuria Superbia is relaxing.

A Neptune's Pride medal, one of the medals from TIE Fighter, an F-shaped medal. edit: a medal shaped like a diamond from Far Cry 2.

I haven't played Waking Mars but I hear it might be relaxing.

Everything in this thread is really good.

So now that this thing has been up for about a month, with 54 published reviews and more in the pipeline, it's time to transition to Phase II (of at least 4 planned phases). Phase II is when I start asking companies for review codes. I'm doing this despite already having a backlog of existing codes (which I'm working through - I'm almost done with The Bridge and Thunder Wolves reviews, for instance, and I reviewed LaCabra's game and Actual Sunlight already) because having actual topical reviews rather than, for instance, a Company of Heroes 2 review is kind of important in terms of being slightly more relevant. I'm writing the first review code request email right now - right now I'm packing in stuff like "you may have seen us on Kotaku or Rock Paper Shotgun" and linking to those things, but I'm wondering if the "hard sell" is a little too hard. Oh well - no harm in trying, right? I'm thinking I'll split requests fairly evenly between indie devs and AAA devs - I expect the indie devs to get back to me and they could use the publicity, which is good, whereas AAA publishers will probably ignore me, but from the point of view of the site I think AAA reviews are sometimes better because I can be snarkier about shit they fuck up without feeling as bad, plus more people have played them so there can be in-jokes that would be lost on people who haven't played a game like Anne Hathaway: Erotic Mouthscape or InFlux. So, wish me luck! And if there's a new game you want to review, and you've either already written a review for the site or you want to write one to show that you can HANDLE THE HEAT, let me know and we can try to get you a review copy, because why not?

"Trolling" as a word has lost all meaning. It used to mean something bad, then people started using it over-zealously as an insult any time they didn't like a sarcastic person, and now "troll" basically just means "to do a thing."

If I had artistic talent I'd paint Nick Breckon wearing the clothes Machiavelli wore in that famous painting of him that's on Wikipedia, but he's in the Weinhandler pose, but instead of holding a wine glass he's holding a holographic display of a Neptune's Pride game. Instead I'm probably going to draw a shitty Nick on a piece of printer paper and mail it, once I remember to steal printer paper from my office.

And maybe Lee and Clementine could be two of the other players.

Presumably you could write your own mipmap generator and mess with the scaling algorithm until it gives you good results. Dunno what that would end up looking like, especially as you mix in AF, but it might be worth a try.

Beloved traditions die hard.

Forcing people to choose an option that does not reflect their actual views on the topic is definitely bad survey design! Multiple choice survey questions should cover all the options, either by including an "Other" option or by being all-encompassing.

That was a rendition of Axel F comprised of pitch-shifted samples of the word "games," of course.

swag means tchotchkes

I can't really get past the question asking me which I prefer. I don't prefer one! That's bad survey design! Your professors should be ashamed!

"Our ethics motherboard has slots for up to 32 gigabytes of RAM, ensuring extremely ethical decision making," added Google.

When I say "shitty," I definitely mean shitty - I have no blank printer paper around, but this (drawn on the back of a used piece of paper) is an approximation of how shitty it would be (I would probably add some sort of Neptune's Pride reference at least for the actual thing, plus uh, soften the jawline): If that sort of thing is not too shitty to be worth acknowledging, then maybe we can figure out a title for it. "F. Nick Breckon" sounds good but other people might have better suggestions.

I kind of want to draw a shitty Nick Breckon on a piece of printer paper, fold it up, put it in an envelope, and mail it the office just to complement the other four.

EVERYTHING'S COMING UP TYCHO 2 down, literally every other game to go! Thank you Lacabra!