[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“A performance from Tremé”] [/caption] Tomorrow night’s the All-Star Game, but my coverage might be a little different than usual. I plan on watching it with friends, so there may not be a liveblog, but I will cover it in the morning. In the meanwhile, here’s what I’ve been up to. ...
Here’s another breakdown of the media I’ve been consuming: Video Games: I haven’t talked about these for a long while, so I’m just gonna go over recent history, post-robbery. L.A. Noire - Just beat it last night. I think that the game premise shows a lot of potential, but the true masterpiece will be any game that piggybacks off of this one. Why did they feel the need to open world this? It only creates dissonance between the character as portrayed and the character they want him to be. Also: interrogations are neat, but very tough. ...
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“375” caption=“Super Potato in Akihabara”] [/caption] As is typical of me, I played a ton of video games this year. Here’s a listing of what I played along with a few short (or long) words on each game. For the most part, this list is restricted to games released in 2010 unless I did not play them until this year. It’s also mostly in chronological order, with some skips here and there. ...
It’s the end of the year and that means that the Giant Bomb guys are putting out their Game of the Year awards. This video summarizes their deliberations which can be heard in full on their podcast while also highlighting Starcraft II, the PC game of the year.
I have a few friends who will typically opt out of buying a new game until the hype and price drops to save themselves some considerable money. It’s a great strategy, that’s for sure, but it misses out on one of the best reasons to pick up a multiplayer game upon release: the shared conversation and the most active period for the community. [caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“Everyone’s playing StarCraft 2 right now. EVERYONE”] [/caption] ...
“WHAT?!” I hear you cry, “StarCraft II isn’t a sport!” Well, it’s got professional players and people make more money doing it than the average Joe, so why not show it a bit since it occupies a lot of my waking time anyway. This Terran vs Zerg match, narrated by Day[9] has some interesting moments in it and some good strategies. Day[9] is an interesting enough narrator too, not wooden and super nerdy and full of interesting insights. If you play SC2, it’s worth checking out this guy’s show. to improve your game. ...
Guess what? It’s hella-StarCraft. It’s also quite good. Definitely worth picking up.
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“Sarah Kerrigan, Pre-Queen of Blades”] [/caption] Like everyone else in the world right now, I’m playing StarCraft II, but I’ve been too busy to get too far into it so I’ve only got a few impressions. - I love the new Adventure Game mission structure. It’s great to have these conversations with members of the crew to flesh out the mythology. When will I get dialog trees? That and a “How appropriate, you fight like a cow” dialog choice are must-haves to me. - The upgrade and mission structure system is pretty neat too. Since I’ve only just made it to the Hyperion, I don’t know if I’ll have the chance to go back and do merc missions too if I do the benevolent ones first, but time will tell on that one. - The jukebox covers are great. I love “Suspicious Minds” - Watch the opening cinematic! Once you’ve played a few missions, watch it again! Hmmmm… - Why is the subtitle option under Gameplay? Shouldn’t it be under sound? - Dynamically growing, unlimited group sizes make me so happy! - I’m already hooked on SC2 achievements. I made it to mission 3 and then restarted the campaign to do them again on hard, not realizing that I’d be able to replay them from the deck of the Hyperion. - I’ve always felt that WarCraft 3’s story borrowed too heavily from the awesome SC storyline (member of one species/race becomes co-opted by another, betrays his own kind, etc.) so it’s nice to get back to the superior SC mythos. Now all I’ve got to do is, you know, make progress in said story so that I can learn what’s up. ...
You may notice some games that are missing from this list and are on every other list. Well, I didn’t play everything because I didn’t have the time or the money, so that accounts for some of the big misses like Pyschonauts or Resident Evil 4. Other games are deliberately omitted :cough: HALO :cough: This list is also way long, but I didn’t want to limit myself to an arbitrary number like 10 or 20, so here it is: ...
Insert another credit, because it’s time for your weekly video game news and you’ve just hit the Game Overview screen. July was an interesting month for sales. It seems that if your name wasn’t EA or Nintendo, you didn’t even crack the top ten list for game sales. In fact, Nintendo’s month of dominance is even more astounding when you consider that the top sellers included New Super Mario Bros. and Mario Kart DS, games well past their prime. This tough economy is making it rough to be anyone but Nintendo, but I’m sure that the holiday season will bring other games to the forefront. There’s lots of good stuff in the pipe. ...