Mawd

I think I'm stumped for this. To make it slightly easier I'll go with my favourite multiplayer map and say Summit from NS2.

Dirty Bomb is fantastic if you can find balanced non pub stompy games.. Try out Sparkz and Fragger if you can. They're really fun. This weekend there's actually a free Merc event so basically everyone will be available in rotation over the next few days. http://dirtybomb.nexon.net/news/3425

So Natural Selection 2 had it's first community made patch in like half a year. It won't bring back the Australasian community or anything but hopefully it's enough to round up the competitive community for a round or two. I just hope enough show for a good few games and the only local server first crash :/ failing that maybe we can all play Dirty Bomb or CS:GO or something.. Sigh if I had a one use time machine or something I'm pretty sure I'd waste it's power to go back one year and play that game at its best. Gosh I think I must have messaged almost every one I knew from that game I must have messaged over 70 people. Had a few replies in interest so hopefully tomorrow we get enough to show for a game or 5. I just really, really hope we find a server and it doesn't all turn out to be a massive joke.

The only match I've really seen was IG vs Fnatic but man that was amazing. Not the flashiest of matches but tense as all heck.

Yeah I was going to say. I don't really play it but they do mix things up with new game modes and global skills. Xmas Aram with Lee Sin skills was pretty fun to dip back into. Plus they still have projects to update or add new characters so frequently. I have no idea how popular their other two map modes are apart from ARAM and Summoner's Rift but it seems like there's a lot to do there.

Can't wait for the highlights and rundowns. :3

I'm checking out Rokka. Seems fine enough for what it is. I don't really see much generic power story stuff so its going well enough. edit: the names (Flamie Speedraw!), female character designs (Flamie again), and the artfully posed upskirt bumshot are gnawing at me. See funnily enough my partner and I loved Kill La Kill because it took all the typical anime bullshit and turned it up to twelve (well loved things that didn't include the creepy mother daughter relationship and scenes). But some crap gets old suuper fast -just like half of the boss cut-scenes in MGSIV. I'm interested in picking up that Iranian set anime, sounds like fun. In other news I am so hyped for the new Berserk manga issues that are supposed to be coming out monthly it's my favourite story so I'm keeeeeen. Also I might finally finish off my rewatch of Vampire Knight which is this gooey high school melodrama with vampires anime that for some reason I fell in love with when I was much younger. I guess it just hit me at the right time crossing over from a toxic as fuck boys school culture to somewhere that let me be myself including indulging in media obviously made for young girls and queers. I think it still reasonably holds up. The main character is a super Mary Sue that everyone loves with almost no explanation until her manifest destiny pops up (hitting all the cliches) but it's still fun enough for me not to care.

I checked out NPR's Snap Judgement podcast and in the episode 'Sex, Lies, and Audiotape' I heard one of the coolest stories I've had the chance to hear on a podcast. The segment is called A Stich in Time and it's a personal interview with 78 year old Arminda Palacios who was the head seamstress for the Hotel Bauen of Buenos Aires, Argentina for twenty years. Unfortunately during an unprecedented financial crisis all staff at the hotel were laid off and the establishment fell into disrepair. But the former employees of the hotel banded together to take ownership of the hotel and repair it from the ground up. Btw I'm listening to the backlog of JP and I'm down to the Danielle & Patricia guest episode and I had no friggin idea that Patricia Hernandez was behind Nightmare Mode. I loved that website after finding it through those Sunday Papers features by RPS and was super bummed when it closed down.

So Currents the new Tame Impala album's out anyone else listening to this? I think it hits one or two middling spots but it's still pretty solid.

Haha that's wonderful.

I just had the weirdest space out moment at the start of the show. It must be because I'm so tired. But I was going through my recently updated podcast list and the episode I'd just listened to (Aziz Ansari on Freakanomics -really good) had finished so I was staring at the next new podcast episode to play. Low and behold the voice of Chris Remo comes on talking about Squarespace as I'm staring at an episode of The Witness and I'm just thinking about how great it is that I've found another podcast with Chris on it. Then Jake starts talking and I'm still thinking "Hey cool another podcast with some of the Idle Thumbs people on it" and only when the video games song comes on does it finally click that I'm not listening to The BBC Witness Archive on The Tulia Drug Bust hosted by Chris Remo and Jake Rodkin But a new episode of Idle Thumbs that my iTunes just happened to skip to.

It's funny seeing MovieBob being talked about on Polygon. His style of videos can be pretty entertaining and I've liked his pop culture series before. But yeah this one did get kinda tired with all the vitriol being flung about without much said of the movie until the second half. Also, he talks about the movie not being classy and then uses an abortion joke in the same breath? What?

Oh man this is the best.

Personally I loathe and will never say gif with a j sound. : > A) it sounds like I'm talking about Jiff the cleaning product I've always loved the 'guh-hih' or 'ghu' sounds ever since my primary school teachers decided we should all learn Sanskrit so we could talk gooder. (Also to better contextualise the Upanishuds and the Bhagavad Gita so we could better absorb their Abrahmic Faith meet Veidic Scripture meet Classical Philosopher New Age Ideology. But Hey that's another story entirely.)

It changes month to month but right now: Path of Exile Dirty Bomb StarCraft 2 StarCraft Mostly just campaigns for SC 1 & 2.

I stumbled across a D&D podcast run by Unwinnable. I haven't looked at it yet, and it's only two episodes so far. But it could be fun eh? It's called Eye of the Beerholder.

:-( that's a shame. I might hold out for something else then. The Lobster seemed fun. Still maybe I should look for something that won't still get a wider release because of is star power. Hrrrrm.

This good news about Dope is keeping me keen. The NZIFF is rolling out and while I usually just look through the movie guide whistfully Mum's said she'd pay for tickets for one or two. So now I've got to sort through the ones that won't get wider releases and pick the winner. Has anyone seen Wolfpack? It looks pretty interesting. It's about kids who were never let outside of a small New York apartment and built their entire view of the world from movies like Resovoir Dogs. I'm pretty sure they knew it was all fake they just learned what was cool to say, do, and look like from them.

I'll keep an eye out for that pitfall. I've been hurt by problematic behaviours before in tertiary study once or twice and I'm currently wary of scoring a hat-trick. At least this time I'm not living in a student town with a binge drinking culture and not much else to do..

So lately I've discovered the MUDD Avalon after my boyfriend decided to get back into it. Playing in a completely player driven game is still super weird. At least in EVE major positions of civil authority were NPC based. In Avalon the Gods and Princes of cities are all people who have completed great acts and if you're paying attention you can see the different Deities and people of importance insulting and challenging each other for their own byzantine machinations. I'm currently going through 'school' being introduced to different aspects of the game with the plan on becoming a Mystic later. Most of the classes involve combat skills to a large degree but if that's not your bag you can become a Druid living in the forests. They aren't pushovers though because if people do threaten the forests they'll quickly find the trees rising against them. Mystics are oracles and seers who can observe events from afar using 'bugged' runestones. They can also curse or bless things which is a major help in preventing say theft from occurring. I'm currently set to join one of the four major cities (you can be stateless) and my city is the paragon of Justice and Good and that city is gearing up for a big war with the city of evil (who would have thought?). Anyway I'm finding it pretty interesting to play in this style of game. I'm still finding my feet in terms of role playing but its neat. Also since these games encourage the use of self written scripts to streamline play I'll have a bunch of small pet projects to do which compliment my IRL studies rather nicely. Yeah fair enough. Knowing that I have friends in servers even if I'm not currently playing with them can be all the difference in motivating me to load that game.

Caught up with Justice Points although as I write this I'm noticing that ep 102 is up now (hah). Been hearing some fun and thought provoking stuff. Like the masculinity of consoles; the continued stubbornness of AAA games to include hot topic race issues without any other races or cultures. Cara Ellison being a guest was a real treat; the other guests I've heard have all been cool but this is the first one who I've recognised and have seen their media before. I had no idea she'd become involved in games writing. It'll be super interesting to see what the writer of the S.EXE series brings to the relationships of her own characters. I should probably go play Sacrelidge sometime too.

It does look good. That sword whoosh is something that needs to be seen around more since its super cool (heh). I might be misinterpreting it here but it seems like its both fast paced and positioning heavy and I think if you were looking for a pitch that puts those concepts forward then there's a lot of room to combine the two into something snappy.

I think that a pitch has to evoke something. You can include mechanics in that but I think you need something else to inspire people beyond a hardcore subset. I suppose you could lead with "Like Darksouls but.." or something similar if you're advertising pure mechanics. Though I think some sort of adjective should usually be around to hook players, even if it feels a little vague. Take 'Clockwork Shooter" for instance. It puts mechanics first but also suggests that timing is very important to the game. If you wanted to get slightly more abstract (and maybe its a stretch but) the name also feels a little steam punk or conjures up imagery of wind up toys. Wind up toys don't just move based on timing they also move in a very determinate fashion which could be a good description for a game that relies on precise timed movement like Dark Souls, Biohazard, or maybe your game.

They put a lot of effort into testing each other for 'weakness' as well. Sure they depend on each other for the balm that shared complaining brings but there's always a hot undercurrent of competitive positioning. It turns out that being a superiority oriented jerk all the time doesn't net you a lot of friends.

"I discovered their evil plot in the bedroom.. They want to take away our precious bodily fluids!" I think that bit might be my favourite.