Salacious Snake

I was sold by the pitch video. I mean, his rat tail has gotten so long, how can you say no to that?

Experiencing noticeable effects of network latency while playing a game solo is irritating as hell. I decided to fuck around in Diablo 3 just a few days ago, and I was warping all over the place; I was playing in hardcore mode, which makes it a pretty worrying and potentially fatal wrinkle. I've never sensed anything like that in StarCraft II, so I think all of the important action is happening locally in that one.

I look at Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County as the best model for a setting that's revisited over the course of a saga. It only connects up geographically or chronologically sometimes, but it still gives a sense of history. There's no reason to make yourself crazy by trying to make a genealogy or timeline or map. On the other hand, the mostly kinda sorta coherent continuity of Star Trek (across TV shows and movies only) does add something to its sense of reality, which I think offsets some of the distancing effect of its more esoteric sci-fi trappings. So I don't know what I'm saying at all. I did love the hints at prior Hyrulian shit in Wind Waker.

The land-sculpting (the part you'd do prior to founding a city) in SimCity 4 was my favorite part of the game, so I'm a bit bummed about it. I wanna get my Bryce 3D on. edit: There's supposed to be a video here, but it's not showing up for me. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yx58fTIWBDE'>link

That's just a pre-made region that comes with a big hill.

This server situation sucks ass.

Based on Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, I think Big Boss is the man for the job. He may be kind of an idiot when it comes to common sense things like what you should or should not put in your mouth, but he's great at finding the right tasks for the right people and managing both short and long term projects, from making cardboard boxes and keeping the kitchen running efficiently to assembling a bipedal tank with nuclear armament. He's also highly persuasive and able to convince even difficult individuals to work for the common cause at their full potential. Based on the earliest games, he has a knack for giving the disillusioned a new sense of purpose, and has a soft spot for refugees. He's not afraid to get down to the nitty gritty and provide hands-on learning experiences to his newest recruits, nor to delegate larger tasks to those who show potential.

One thing that can help is that you can shut off add-on facilities. Like, you can temporarily decommission a single ambulance garage.

The naval battles are by far the best part of AC3, so this seems like a logical and fun theme for the next game.

Well that's pretty cool. Speaking of traffic, shit is fucked in Fartropolis, and I see no way of fixing it!

I don't like the look of this at all. I hope those images are not representative of the final product. Human Revolution had really strong artistic direction and a unique style. This looks like all overly detailed textures and teal and orange like fucking everything else coming out for the past few years. Deadly Shadows got carried away with the bump mapping for sure, but at least it had that cool purple light that made it stand out. I won't turn my nose up at the rest of the game if it's good, but this stuff sucks. Where's Jonathan Jacques-Belletête when you need him?

I've had an experience similar to Chick's, where it seemed like a monetary gift from one city to another disappeared. It did show up eventually. The region stuff has a distinctly asynchronous feel, and unsurprisingly so, since it was designed for multiplayer situations wherein players may not be logging in and playing at the same time. It feels weird when you're playing alone; it's very much like playing a board game or a play-by-email computer game by yourself. Like, when you pull out to region view, you're still in control of a single city, and you make deals with the other cities as if they were someone else's, even though they're yours. It's all odd and feels a bit disjointed. It's clear that this is largely due to the design of the game, but I suspect some of it is due to the server problems they're having with the launch. I'd wager that my gift of $20,000 from Fartropolis to Poop City would have appeared more swiftly had the servers not been so bogged down last night. I would very much like to try a multiplayer region, as it does seem to be the way the game is intended to be played. (Origin iD: Wikipedia_Brown)

I plan on being there! That's all I've got so far.

I spoke too soon about profanity. Everything is a string of asterisks now. That pisses me off.

These are the reasons why I like Zuma, and even prefer it over the games it clones. Like, I could fire up the Nuon and play Ballistic (Puzz Loop renamed to sound more badass), but Zuma "feels" better.

I've only played for a few minutes so far, but I really like farting around in my little crapburg. Also, I'm extremely happy that you can still use profane city names... I was afraid the "always online" stuff would mean a profanity filter. Maybe it does filter things in public games, but privately they didn't stop me from founding the city of Shitville in the county of Buttholevania. If anyone wants to be my Origin pal, my name is Wikipedia_Brown. I'm pleasantly surprised by how well it runs on my laptop with an Intel 4000 thingy. It may get bad as the city becomes denser, but the game actually looks neat with the settings way down low. The buildings almost look untextured, but in an eye-pleasing way. I'm installing it on my beefy desktop as we speak, so that will probably be revelatory after slumming it on the portable. image relevant to portable computing:

That does sound cool and very appropriate to the source.

I know what you mean. He does point out his ambivalence at a couple of points, both because of certain uneven elements in the game, and because of the events (marketing and stuff) leading up to his experiencing the game. He had to make an effort to judge the game on its own merits without all that baggage. Not that it's necessary to attempt to judge things that way, but that's the sort of review model that Giant Bomb descends from. It sounds like a weird game.

That Tagin' Dragon cover is frightening. So is SHIT, for that matter. Yikes.

Yeah… that seems like a good solution assuming everything works as it should. It's at least a little more convenient than having both an HDMI switcher and a TOSLINK switcher. Nice finds!

That would get the job done! I need the TOSLINK to go into my surround sound receiver thingie. (It predates HDMI, but is otherwise a totally badass unit that I don't want to replace.) My TV only has 2 HDMI inputs, which is not cutting it anymore. I found this thing: http://www.amazon.com/Monoprice-Switcher-Toslink-Digital-Coaxial/dp/B003L14WB8 The reviews are not encouraging.

That's a good idea. Also, I totally feel you on HDMI Shortage, though I think the even larger annoyance for my setup in particular is TOSLINK Shortage Tycoon 2013. Or, more accurately, the combination of the two is giving me headaches. Anyone know a good switcher box type thing that will handle both (without introducing latency)?

That's so fucking lame. It looks like a video card box.

I have some fond memories of using QSpy to find matches. It was a lot better than my notebook full of hostnames. (Like quake.texas.net or quake.power.net…) I like how nobody is shedding a tear for UGO.com. It's hard to believe that cesspool stuck around as long as it did.

I'd like to add to my already overlong thoughts that one thing I admire about the Metal Gear series is that the games try to make a point, or at the very least explore a theme. It doesn't sound like much, but it's a big deal when you think about how rarely games do anything of the sort. I don't think they're ever wholly successful in this endeavor, but it's still something I appreciate. As crazy as it is, I think MGS2 comes the closest to working in that regard. Revengeance falls somewhere in the middle, I think. Its ruminations on freedom, violence, moral relativism and… all the other stuff that gets jumbled up in there are not very cogent.