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Monday, June 27, 2011

From Paris With Love


"Extraordinarily bad by any measure." - Tom Long

"Desperately unoriginal." - Liam Lacey

"No movie star appears to have more fun in a crap movie than
John Travolta, and his inimitable my-check-has-cleared! glee
is the best thing about this lame espionage thriller." - J R Jones

Sunday, June 26, 2011

Dear Esther



Dear Esther is a Half-Life 2 mod that's achieved some serious clout over the last few years, and it's only now that I've had the pleasure of playing the game.
Or at least I think it was a pleasure.

It took me about half an hour to beat the game.
Or at least I think I beat the game.

I'm not really sure if Dear Esther is a game.


Friday, June 24, 2011

A Map of My Childhood

Do you know what experiencing true loss feels like?

I do.

When I randomly came across the artist Bill Mudron's merch site I had no idea that he would be selling a map of Hyrule that trumps every other map ever made. It's got Zelda 1, Zelda 2, and (look closely) Wind Waker! Plus there's a list of enemies, items and secrets. It's crazy detailed.



And guess what?

It's SOLD OUT.

You will never own this, and neither will I.
Yes, I know. I'm crying, too.



(This dude is also selling some incredible art deco Doctor Who posters, plus a bunch of other awesome stuff)

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Monday, June 20, 2011

Face-Blog

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Sunday, June 19, 2011

Poopocalypse


My favorite part of is where the pigeon shits all over the Eiffel Tower and the trailer goes into slow-mo, like it's the coolest thing that's ever happened.

This is the only game where you can do a loop in the air and launch your bird-shit a full 360 degrees, which is even more satisfying than it sounds because I'm pretty sure if I tried to do this in real life (simultaneously performing a back-flip while shitting), the results wouldn't be half as graceful.

This is the best monochromatic game ever.

Friday, June 17, 2011

Gamers are Creepy Sociopaths



My brother was reading the Escapist, dredging through the forums as a base form of entertainment, when he came across a topic called "The Most Immoral Thing You've Done in a Game".


Here's Gralian's post:



"I, uh... I don't know why, but i kidnap people on Red Dead Redemption. I find people riding out in the wilderness alone, or i find a stagecoach, i put on my bandana, i kill any companions the victim might have (and any witnesses), and then i rope up the last one left alive, hogtie them, and put them on my horse. I then ride out into the middle of nowhere, it could be a camp, it could be the top of a cliffside, i point the gun at their face, and pull the trigger. The benefit to a cliffside is that the corpse sometimes dramatically ragdolls off the side and falls down the crevice. Sometimes i ride up to a deep river and throw them in, causing them to drown, while i watch. Sometimes i put them in front of a train and wait until they are run over. (I got the Dastardly achievement purely by accident by doing this). Sometimes, if the train is in the station, i board it - and wait until we're in the middle of nowhere, like somewhere high up in the mountains. I then take out my gun and start shooting everyone, working my way up to the driver, and killing him if the train has stopped. I was sad to see you couldn't drive the train yourself to the next station, which meant a lot of tedious riding back to town. Ah, the town; there are the times where i lose all subtlety and don't bother looking for victims in the wilderness. Sometimes i simply ride into town, roping and dragging someone to the outskirts, letting him or her go while i kill the law enforcement, and laugh as they try to run back to civilisation, only to ride up and abduct them inches before freedom. Sometimes i have my eye on someone in particular. I've hogtied people in bars, killed everybody inside and any law enforcement outside, then make off with the victim on horseback. And then there are the times i drag people through town until death for the sole purpose of luring the law enforcement out, so i can murder them all and abduct one of them, making an example of him, such as laying him in the middle of the street and executing him with a headshot for all to see, or taking him to the middle of a desert, releasing him, only for him to be eaten by wolves, or simply slit his throat with the knife. In fact, the knife, revolver, and tomahawk are my favoured weapons of execution, probably in that order. Though the revolver has the benefit of sometimes making the body jerk a bit, letting it fall down cliffsides as i described earlier. The knife is more of a silent weapon when you don't want to be bothered with witnesses. The sort of thing you use to kill someone when you're at a campsite and they're by the tent.
I have no idea why i do these things. I just get... cravings. It's very satisfying. I've wasted many hours simply hunting and killing people in this fashion, but always making sure to wear my bandanna so i'm always 100% honourable. I'm sort of like the wild west version of Patrick Bateman."

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Beard-Off




Yeah.

I think this post is pretty fucking weird, too.




Unless I'm bitten by a rabid, radioactive Mel Gibson, I will never achieve that level of beard.

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Minecraft Monday

On a Wednesday, too! How crazy is that? (Alliteration > Chronology)

The story behind this video is that some writer dude sent a major publisher a novel, and while the dude didn't get published the novel itself was so unique that it inspired the following narrated, machinima production, done in Minecraft.

Basically, the narrator is going to read an excerpt of the writer's original work (which is a single, epic sentence) while a bunch of blocky Minecraft dudes act out what we assume went on inside of the writer's head.

Prepare yourself.





I'm going to make a shrine for the narrator of this thing.

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Power Sluts And Their Sexy Pooters

I've been checking out the logs for what kind of traffic I receive on my blog and do you know what the most popular post of all time is?

My 3D Pedo-Box.

And in a very close second place:

I Must Show You My Sexy New Girlfriend
(I'm pretty sure someone is checking this post out right now)

So it appears that I've got some sort of pedophile/sex fiend infestation where (in quotes) "people" are typing God-knows-what into their search engines and stumbling onto my blog. No matter how far down the archive list these posts go they still seem to attract at least one view a day.

But I'm not 100% that this is what's going on, so in order to test my theory I'm going to see if this post here attracts the avalanche of perverts that I'm expecting it will.

And if it did work then I'm sorry Pervert but there are no sexy pooters here. I'm just manipulating your warped libido for my own entertainment and mild scientific interest.

Monday, June 13, 2011

The Prettiest Game Ever Made

El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron is a color orgy

(Music)
Played the demo of El Shaddai, a platformer/fighting game with a biblical-themed story. I've never seen anything like it.


The strange thing about this game is: I feel like I've played it before.

On the NES.

I'm really serious about that. I feel like I'm interacting with some forgotten logic that existed in the bygone age of video games. Do you remember those strange titles that existed in those early, boundless years? They possessed a different rhythm from what we're used to now. From the story to the flow of the game, things were different in the 8-bit days; and El Shaddai, more than any retro title I've played in years, struck that odd note.


It's hard as hell, by the way, and judging from a gameplay video performed by more capable hands I'm pretty confident that my time in front of a controller was spent playing it all wrong. This isn't a modern I-already-know-the-controls fighting game and it isn't a button-masher. To play El Shaddai you have to first admit that you don't know dick about El Shaddai. After that, I did a lot better.


Very pretty.

Extremely pretty.

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Esoterica America



The game begins with a fetus. It ends with an English majoring suicide bomber.


Saturday, June 11, 2011

Don't Forget E3 Entirely

Sure, there are some impressive looking games at E3, but the whole event had, as far as I was concerned, only one reason for existing: Skyrim.

For your pleasure, here are two hard-boiled game critics, Jim Sterling and Max Scoville, transformed into giddy children by the magic of Skyrim. Keep in mind that these guys generally hate all games. They're like those two muppets on the theater balcony.
But right now they're more like Cookie Monster and Ernie.

And... There might be a few ads. Just a heads-up.


In review: Skyrim will make you young again.

And if you find Sterling and Scoville to come across as complete douches (you're not alone) then here's some unfiltered Skyrim footage, narrated by Todd Howard. And yes, you can execute a dragon with a battle axe.

Friday, June 10, 2011

The Time Machine



Last month I bitched about The Time Machine (2002), mostly because it transformed from a smart, personal story to, "Watch out, gang! Morlocks!"


I picked up an old copy of H.G. Well's original novel (for twenty-five cents. On a related note I just bought ten pounds of bone-in ham for ten bucks. Go me) because I was curious how the source material compared to the 2002 and 1960 movies.

It was a real eye-opener.
I learned two things:


  1. The novel is always better than the movie.
  2. What H.G. Wells wrote and what people interpreted from his story are two totally different things.



Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Forget E3

Something big just dropped on XBLI.
Something that defies all understanding.




I swear the game itself is ten times stranger than the trailer would have you believe.

If Katamari Damacy shot up on Drain-O while Deadly Premonition slipped a hand under it's skirt you still wouldn't get half the 'fucked up' that Esoterica America delivers in the first two minutes of play.
And I don't even remember the first twenty minutes that well, either. I was laughing my ass off the whole time.


I've never bought an XBLI game right when it asks me to, but when the prompt came up I didn't even have to think about it.


Expect a life-changing analysis of this masterpiece in the near future.

Monday, June 6, 2011

Experimental Pizza

Scene: Pizza joint. Lunch break.
Characters: Justin (me), the Girl-Behind-the-Display-Case (We'll call her GBDC), and the Guy-Who-Looks-the-Other-Way-So-He-Doesn't-Have-to-Do-Anything (Extra 1).
Props: strange pizzas on display

"Hey, what's in that one?" I ask the girl behind the display case as I point at a stuffed pizza with strange contents sticking out of it's sides.

"French fries." Says GBDC.


Sunday, June 5, 2011

Extra Credits

Do you enjoy game theory but hate having to open up Gamasutra and read all those pointless, long-winded words?

I totally do. Words suck.

I like useful information on game theory, but I don't want to have to spend an entire afternoon of word-mining just to get a hold of a single, good idea. Maybe reading a ten-page essay comparing the casual and hardcore market is fulfilling on some higher, aesthetic level; but I'm a dumb creature that expects immediate rewards. I read fiction for entertainment, but I read game theory for information.


Now wouldn't it be great if someone could provide game theory (and gaming related discussion in general) in a concise, entertaining format?


Pow! Extra Credits in your face!


All the art done by some chick named Allison Theus, who draws monsters better than you ever will, and the host is some dude who (I hope) had his voice modified, because he sounds like a fast-talking muppet sucking on helium. There's some thoughtful discussion going on here that's almost impossible to find on a message board.

Actually, anything thoughtful is almost impossible to find on a message board.
Blogs, too, I'm afraid. Why are you still reading this crap?


And if you prefer your game theory videos with more beard, then try this out.