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Showing posts from 2012

-REVIEW: Dinos in Space-
a yarned deathball

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Title: Dinos in Space Platform: PC, Mac Release: $5 available from developer

Diablo 3: we are the 99%

So Diablo 3 is out. If you're looking for screenshots and media and other fancy-schmancy malarkey, you can just google it. I'm about to just...talk. It's got a lot of good things going for it. It looks great, runs smoothly, has a friendly, accessible inventory and hotkey scheme, and delivers dastardly satisfying combat feedback. When you click, things go boom. On top of all this is an overwhelming amount of lore, backstory, sidestory, journal padding, and platinum-pantied voice acting surrounded by increasingly verisimilitudinous visual fidelity so much so that if you had a big enough screen, it'd easily take over your waking world. Boom!

-REVIEW: Cargo: The Quest for Gravity-
a principled madness

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Title: Cargo: The Quest for Gravity Developer: Ice-Pick Lodge Price/Platform: $19.99/Steam Insanity, at a price that can't be beat

-REVIEW: Avernum: Escape from the Pit-
a tale of two richards

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Title: Avernum: Escape from the Pit Developer: Spiderweb Software Price/Platform: $9.99/Steam I told you so

super.hype: When Friends Become Frenemies

Games Journalism is a necessary evil, as regarded by gaming vets. We all know the score, they're out to sell more copies, get more hits, and make more of the almighty dollarinos. This means they've always got ulterior motives: unbalanced reviews, fawning editorials, and of course page-crushing interactive and flash-based advertisements. Games Journalism, what is it good for? But the sad truth is that the emphasis of the phrase is not the "evil" but rather the "necessary": we all need somebody to fish out that ocean for us from time to time. It operates on the same principle as the good ol' fashioned industry it's fathered by. Without it, we'd either be stuck following only what we know and referred from place to place by one samey individual to the next, or worse be completely devoid of contact with human life and degenerate into HG Wellsian troglodytism. Is there a middle ground to be had? Recent coverage of Deus Ex: Human Revolution may h

The Dialogue of a Games Review

The entirety of this blog has been dedicated to gaming. Some of it is dedicated to the industry, some of it is dedicated to criticism, and the majority of it has been dedicated to game review. However, this most dominant of things is actually the thing that I loathe and love the most. Games review is inherently subjective. It’s also largely used as a compass, and in this sense it is viewed as an objective tool with which one can guide him or herself to their desired gaming destination. In this light it’s easy to see why the ambivalence exists, and so strongly: who really knows where they want to end up, and how many of those people actually know how to get there? And yet therein is my implied task: to guide and direct the flow of fulfillment.

Heartbreak Inspiration: I am the cat

They say heartbreak is the best inspiration. This is heartbreak inspiration There’s been a stray around our house for the past few days. The first couple of days we fed it food…bad idea. But it’s hard to say no to a stray sometimes, especially when they end up in your own backyard. But it got the crazy idea in its head that it isn’t a stray. It loves people. Whenever we step outside it immediately starts to rub on our legs and try to be petted. But it isn’t just trying to scratch for fleas. I know because it otherwise sits around and can’t be bothered. But once we show it some attention, it’s clear she just wants to be loved.

Fanfictions are Crap

This is a personal piece I submitted to another site, but was rejected due to "style" issues. So I thought "well that blows" but then realized I have my own blog where I publish stuff all the time, on which I'm the style nazi, and in which I can choose to publish what I choose. So I'm publishing it here. enjoy.

-REVIEW The Last Remnant-
the particle ocean

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   Title: The Last Remnant Developer: Square Enix Release: X360, PS3, PC  In the future, when you die, your car, your house, your clothes, your TV, and your wife disintegrate. That is, unless someone else decides to take responsibility for it all

Guest Article: A Final Fantasy XIII Review
by Richard "jedirnc" Chang

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I’ve been busy as of late, and every time I get busy I make other people do this kind of charity work that I do for you for me. Is that confusing? It should be, because stuff like this should never have to happen, but dammit, here we are, aren’t we? Life sucks, sometimes. Anyway, I’ve never played Final Fantasy XIII, but I have friends with whom I’ve talked long and hard about it and by their kind hearts and wretched opinions, I feel strongly averse to it. Averse enough to publish a review that essentially tears it apart and really talks about why it’s so terrible. Also, I can’t say no to free material. Unless it’s from you, so no, don’t ask me to publish your stuff. Well, only sometimes. I have to read it first. Anyway, here it is. Final Fantasy Episode XIII: A Ridonkulously Long Review By Richard “jedirnc” Chang

Games as Diaries or Why Creatures is "Magic"

I just ran across this piece on Unwinnable about the game Creatures , something of akin to an ant farm simulator/behavioral modeling machine. The game has no true goal, but its mechanics are incredibly complex. The purpose of the game was to recreate the phenomenon of life in a basic, algorithmic form such that the beings within could run their course from birth to death, all while allowing the player to influence their actions both directly (by giving them direct orders) and indirectly (by way of providing materials and some pavlovian operant conditioning).

-REVIEW: From Dust-
you won't see it coming

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From Dust Developer: Eric Chahi/Ubisoft Release: $14.99 Why do you always have to treat people like money, sir

super.hype: Sterilized Chaos

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Fun is really hard work most of the time. Real Life necessitates it: a night of heavy drinking is always accompanied by a terrible hangover no matter how good of a time you had that night, unless you take the necessary precautions and eat adequate amounts of food and space your drinks out by the hour with glasses of water (but it’s likely that if you had a good time, you were too busy doing that and not drinking glasses of water). Blowing up an old CRT monitor 10 miles from the highway in the middle of Death Valley by stuffing it with 20lbs of Tannerite binary exploding targets and firing a large-caliber rifle at it necessitates being 10 miles away from the highway in the middle of Death Valley to prevent the possibility of stray fragments landing in populated areas or roadways. Having fun, good, explosive, regrettable, coyote ugly-style fun, is annoyingly burdensome. Not so in videogames.