MoTW: Metroid Fight for Love

What I'm Playing 11/30

Playing :

Xcom Enemy Within :: was on sale for Black Friday so I picked it up. The original game sat unplayed like all year on my desktop (got it for 5 bucks on sale a while ago)..I had heard they made it into a FPS but after watching some great lets play videos it clearly is a very fun game very much in line with the original 90s classic. 2K games did right by Xcom..thats not to say I forgive them for civ5 or the GTA series.

Sots The Pit Gold :: Another game bought on sale that sat on my desktop unplayed for the longest time. These developers epically blew their AAA debut but The Pit is a great little scifi rougelike. Its an "old school" game designed to do everything it can to defeat the player..there are 45 levels and I rarely make it past 10.

Pandora First contact :: Beta tested this game and wasnt going to buy it, but the Beta tester discount was too good to say no to. I love me cheap games. This is a beautiful "Civ in space" game that may be a real winner in the future if the devs fill in the empty but pretty shell the game is now with content.

Looking to Play ::

Hearthstone :: I've been watching a lot of lets plays for Blizzards card gambling game  "Hearthstone". Its an evil evil game that will make Blizzard lots of ill gotten gains 1 dollar at a time from their 10 million customers. I really want to hate it..but it looks fun. You can play without paying $$ and earn enough winnings to keep playing..god its evil. Blizzards stupid 15 different levels of security features on players account have been keeping me from using my account...hopefully customer service will be able to help me without a DNA test.

Watching : Downloaded Seasons 11,12,13 of South Park. Always a great laugh. downloaded the anime historical drama "Graveyard of the Fireflies", which is a really depressing movie about the firebombing of Japanese cities by the US in WW2 as seen through 2 homeless children. Cant seem to turn on the internet without tripping over stories about the US killing 100,000+  random civilian in some foreign county we have no business being in. Oh NO Japan has claimed some pissy 1 mile island in the pacific! Lets slaughter 100s of innocent families with FIRE so they die in the most horrible prolonged way imaginable!

No games for old men (on the ps3)

In order to see how the other half (console gamers) lives I went out and picked up a ps3 and a couple games that I thought might interest me. I purposely avoided gratuitously violent games like GTA or Call of Duty.

I have 26 games currently uploaded from Steam on my computer and of those 4 involve some of sort of personal humaniod avatar punching/hitting casting at etc a humanoid. And of those 4 only one is semi realistic and the other 3 are cartoon-like/artisticly rendered worlds.

Of the 10 games I found for ps3 that I thought might interest me, only 1, MLB "The Show" doesn't directly involve the player pressing buttons to punch/hit/kick etc a realistic humanoid character.And all of the fighting is realistically rendered and human(oid) on human(oid). Even Ratchet and Clank (playstations answer to mario) involves constantly shooting people to reach the objective. 

Having been brought up on super mario brother and civilizations, and not being a "gun guy", I really have no interest in playing games where you physically fight your way to the goal. And the way you get to your goal, the way you win, is starkly different from computer to console.

While the computer hosts all sorts of different types of games and the games I like the most are strategy games. It shocked me to find that in the entire ps3 library of over 300+ different games I know of only 1 (Civilizations:revolution) that is a strategy title. 1 thinking games 2200 billion press the button to hit someone in the face inorder to win games.  

Anyone who doesn't think modern console video games, even the non-shooters like lego batman, arnt training the brains of our kids that they need to punch, kick or shoot in order to win is fooling themselves.

Teenage Mutant Koopa Troopars

Cute vid.  (via topless robot)

Drawing on the Computer

This guy does great video game commentary..and apparently is a very talented computer artist. Amazing to watch the picture take form

Website charts game price discounts

Super nice little site here. Logs all the discounts on games offered by the various websites. recommended by Tobold the Wow blogger..

I also use shacknews weekend discount list to check prices. Imagine if we had this sort of marketplace for schools or doctors or lawyers.

GW2: Tarragon Marjoram

Click the Pic to enlarge. My Sylvari Ranger Tarragon Marjoram at the Dragon Bash festival in Guild Wars 2. Gotta remember to get rid of the UI for future pics. 

New XBox will spy on you

I was just thinking the other day how we've got cameras around us all day every day. ATM cameras, store security cameras, traffic cameras etc etc. None of those are in your home though. "Xbox One", which wasnt sounding that great to begin with, now apparently will contain software that scans the room its in and sends that info to Microsoft. Wow..I've always been creeped out by the Progressive Insurance ad that tries to sell putting an always on camera in your car. This is another level of creep.

The really interesting thing about this patent is that it suggests that copyright holders are allowed to govern performances in otherwise private dwellings.

The dysfunctional gaming industry

 Ya..I know..like we need to hear about yet another broken system. Le sigh. Anyhoo I read a great article that lays out the problems gamers, game makers, and game sellers are dealing with and I thought I'd share it with you.

My take - its all the Internet's fault. Legion of internet opinions from gamers are causing too many cooks in the kitchen. The "social media" phenomenon has opened the door to marketing/publishing idiots who games come secondary to advertising and labeling consumers. And "inter connectivity" lures resources away from games and towards making sure you can watch tv play games and order a pizza with the same system.

As a gamer I really do want to play the same games over and over and I wish the artists people out there would just accept that. And I dont want my game to also connect me with my 2nd grade teacher when I mispell something. I remember a time when a game machine was just about games..what was so wrong with that? I rember when - if I wanted information about the next game coming out I had to buy a magazine rather than have a banner pop up in the middle of the game or the require that I buy the new game in order to continue playing the old one. 

The Internet has matured to the point where everybody has a voice, and the barriers separating the voice of the well-informed from the probably insane have never been lower

First Age of Wonders vid out

Wow this looks great! Interesting that its funded by the Minecraft warchest.

The World is saved music video

Age of Wonders 3 announced!

Its good times for fantasy strategy gamers! Age of Wonders was the game I didnt play..but this new one with steampunk and theocracy options looks great!

Guild Wars 2 guild meeting picture

I'm the little guy on left with the yellow suit and black ears. Click to enlarge

Lets make music together

One of the forefathers of modern MMO's has been resurrected! Ashrons Call 2..which so many hated but I still believe had one of the most "living" worlds ever made has been brought back online. One my favorite aspects of AC2 was the music system as seen below.

Eve Pew Pew

Here is a good example video of a battle in Eve, the space game that diplomat in Libya was a player in. Too complicated for me but I love to download podcasts of the pilots and listen to them talk.

Guild Wars 2 Music Video

This game is coming out Aug 28..I cant wait. Free to Play btw. Pretty song.

Angry Joe reviews Torchlight 2

I was going to do a blogpost about my beta experience playing Torchlight 2 but Angry Joe did a fairly  good job and has video to boot. Verdict : Buy it as soon as it come out! $20 is an excellent price for this awesome game that wont rot your soul and make you an irresponsible consumer like spending money on Diablo3 would. And if you cant go another minute without playing a mouse clicker dungeon crawl order Titan Quest Immortal throne from the internet. Great game with an ancient mythology theme and loads of different character class combos to experiment with.

$70 Million was not enough to keep the studio alive

Curt Shillings gaming company, 38 Studios went belly up after making 70 million dollars on their last product. Makes no sense to me...how can they not afford to pay their workers after generating 70 million dollars in profit?(click on the picture for larger view)

Guild Wars 2 Tips and Tricks

This fellow named Dulfy posted an awfully useful collections of 30 tips and tricks for new GW2 beta players. I'm going to relink it here Check it out!

Kickstarter Project : Leisure Suit Larry

Several game developers have taken to Kickstarter.com for support of their titles. This is a good thing since publishers are out for $$ which adds up to stupidity and censorship. We should all help make Leisure suit Larry "come again" since the world needs to get its head of the bible and start laughing at sex again.