Category: Uncategorized

Here’s a nice screenie of some architecture near the duomo in Assassin’s Creed II.

Oh, wait.  That’s a photo of real life.  Here’s the screenshot.

You just try to tell me that’s not amazing.  My dad starting playing AC2 a little while ago, and realized he could clamber his way up to a viewpoint not unsimilar to the view from an apartment he stayed in. I assume I’m not alone in eyeing churches a little differently after having played this game — judging handholds and looking out for glowing feathers.  These two images speak to just how faithfully the developers recreated reality, and if I ever find myself in Venice I had better see haycarts all over the place, for my own safety.

A recent WSJ article with the SEO-friendly title “Time Travel Gets Closer to Reality” addresses this topic.

The game’s producer-authors chose those years as the most eventful of the era and labored lovingly to re-create the environs as exactly as possible. They hired Renaissance scholars to advise on period garb, architecture, urban planning, weaponry and the like. They took tens of thousands of photographs of interiors and streets. They used Google Earth liberally to piece together the ground-up and sky-down perspectives through which the action flows.

Well, it worked. 

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Fine.  Yes, I have considered trying out Star Trek Online.  I admit it.  Now, check out this little snippet from the FAQ: 

What’s more, anyone can create their own species in Star Trek Online, meaning you can tell your own story about how you came to be in the galaxy. Leave your mark on the Star Trek universe!

Yeah.  I’m going to have to go ahead and caution against this.  If you’re a fan-fic person or heavy RPer and want to get your stuff out there, by all means go for it, but if you’ve had a cool sci-fi idea kicking around in your head for a while and think this might be a fun way to try it out before writing your novel, please don’t.  If this world is the Star Trek world, and the Star Trek world is owned by CBS, can we assume that anything that happens in this world is owned by CBS?  Considering the successes Blizzard has had in this arena, I see no reason why not.  Either way, I think it is safe to assume that CBS has better lawyers than you do.  Be warned.

You may remember a post about PS3 trophies on Facebook, in which I suggested WoW do the same.  Well, clearly the fine people at Blizzard are reading this blog and waiting for the next pearl of gamer wisdom to drop from my lips.  They couldn’t possibly have come up with this on their own.

Here’s a quick walkthrough on how to make this happen:

• First, look for the World of Warcraft Feeds on Facebook application.  Clicky.
• You will need to link your account, done easily enough by a pop-up window upon the entry of your Battlenet info.
• Next, you will be see your characters – pick the one you want to boast about.
• The fun part comes next; picking what events you want to post.  Achievements, Boss Kills, and/or rare loot (with selectable parameters!) .

Easy peasy.  The app includes a “View in 3D” option, allowing you to show off your badassed mofo in all his or her glory.

Now get out there and tell some animals you love them!

And while we’re on MGS, how about a little Gray Fox?

Booyah.

Ah, MGS; the game which taught us that a cardboard box and a pack of smokes is all it takes to be a super-ninja-spy-dude.  If one wants to sport a some ink from the game, though, what are your options?
The FOXHOUND logo?

Maybe a bit of the cover art?
 
If your local tattoo guy is Yoji Shinkawa, maybe.

Now, this guy’s got it right.  The Kojima Productions logo.

Simple, bold, and 100% rad.

• Clan: Human miners.  The bad guys from the movie, still just looking to dig up the cheekily-named unobtainium. 
• Elite unit: those “get away from her you bitch” walker things

• Clan: Human datajackers.  When the Skypeople return, they’re going to want to check out this whole entire-biosphere-is-a-network-of-memories thing and exploit it.  Imagine the processing power if all the living matter on a planet is hot-swappable — I’ll bet they’ll want to do something more with that than just beat Russians at chess.  These guys come in and interface with the native flora and wildlife, and can turn it against whoever bothers them. 
• Elite unit: Hacker.  Can turn any technology (human or Navi-natural) to its own side.

• Clan: Na’vi traditional.  Horses, dragonthings, bows and arrows. 
• Elite Unit: Priest of Eywa.  After seeing that the mother goddess will send hordes of badass beasties if you ask nicely, a sect of Na’vi shamans focus on just that.  They can’t bring the stampede every turn, but when they do?  Good times.

• Clan: Navipunks.  Native Pandorans who salvaged the Skypeople tech after the Hometree Event. 
• Elite Unit: Coptertroops.  They’ve got helicopter backpacks.  They’ve got bows.  They will fly around and kill you.

• Clan: Dark Na’vi.  Descendants of one of the clans unwillingly subjugated by the grandfather’s-grandfather, these Na’vi refuse to bond with the forest.  They live in caves, eating yummy fishes.  Now, these guys are no idiots; they know where the unobtainium is and how to get it, and they will use this advantage to befriend the Skypeople and destroy their age-old enemies.
• Elite Unit: Underminer.  It’s off to work these guys go until your fortifications have fallen into the earth.

Just heard that the spanking-new iPad had SnoCross demoed on it.  Is it true?  More casual gaming for all?

Update:  And here’s the info.  Is that Cyan Mini Cooper from the same game?

When did The King of Games get this T back in stock?  And why didn’t they call me?  They key to this shirt’s awesomitude is the lack of the world Zelda.  Gamers are a private crowd, and we like to be recognized by others of Our People without broadcasting our nature to the world. 

“Join hosts Mark and Jessie as they journey Across the Nerd-a-verse! Join us each episode for nerd talk that hits you like a zerg rush! We cover video games, comic books, all things sci-fi, movies, television, books and more.”

• When Jessie and I got together and started to plan out ATN we both envisioned the show as a place where we could discuss any subject matter that happened to be tickling our fancy. So, in that respect, I don’t think that we have any topics that we consider expressly taboo. ATN is actually our second attempt at producing a show. Our first attempt was a revival of a Team Fortress 2 focused podcast known as “The Fortcast”. As Jessie and I got deeper into our planning for that show we came to realize that we had a lot more that we wanted to be able to talk about and that a TF2 based podcast would become a bit restrictive. We basically wanted to talk about “all things nerd”. In general, we’ve tended to avoid political topics, and music discussions. I think that the biggest factor that determines our choice of topics is if we feel that we have something worth saying about a particular subject.

• Jessie and I are both members of the Team Fortress 2 Fort (http://www.teamfortress2fort.com) community clan, which is really where our friendship began. Sadly to this point our friendship is still very much a virtual one as we’ve never actually met in person. Through discussions on the community’s forums is where we began to form a friendship. It didn’t hurt that in game Jessie and I made a quite potent Heavy + Medic combo. When “The Fortcast” took a break due to some staff changes Jessie was one of my first choices to try and revive that show. The revival of “The Fortcast” didn’t happen, but we came away from that attempt with ATN so I guess it worked out okay. The fact that Jessie originally hails from the Western NY area as I do certainly helped solidify our friendship as we could bond over the common Western NY touchstones of chicken wings and the Buffalo Bills.

• In general, I think that we are currently in an era of gaming where more things are going right then wrong. I think it is great that videogaming as a medium is becoming a larger part of our popular culture landscape then it has ever been. It has been great to watch the medium grow over the course of our lifetimes, and I think we are finally entering an era where our long time claims that videogaming is as valid of a medium as say movies are finally being validated. It is even more exciting when you consider that we’ve yet to even see platforms like the PS3 taken full advantage of. When you combine that with the fact that independent development is now far more viable due to online distribution services such as Steam and Xbox Live we are in a great place to watch people really push our hobby into new and interesting places. If there was a negative trend that was bothering me, I think I would say that it would be the development disparity between the console platforms and my platform of choice the PC. The PC I think has had a great resurgence as a platform, but it still makes me sad that I have not seen console titles that I am interested in such as “Castle Crashers” or “Bayonetta” make their way over to my side of the fence. However, this is a trend that I have seen become less and less as of late to the point where a game not having a PC version appears to be more the exception then the rule.

• First off, I’m going to take this question as a bit of a compliment, because I think one thing that I’ve always wanted the show to strive for was to provide that same type of talk radio feel. I’ve long been a fan of talk radio in all its formats be it sports, politics what have you. If you get into my car the radio will usually be tuned to some talk radio station. I’ll listen to just about anything from Rush Limbaugh to “sports” talk such as the Tony Kornheiser show, and the technology programming being produced by Leo Laporte and the TWIT network. I think if I take my inspiration to how I approach broadcasting from anyone it would be from Mr. Kornheiser and Mr. Laporte, who both do an excellent job of making a show be about more then just sports or technology and more about our current social culture in general. The really exciting thing for me about the emergence of new media such as podcasting and blogging, is that it has allowed for a wider array of cultural topics to enter the arena of public discussion. On ATN we happen to focus on subjects such as videogaming and movies because they are not only near and dear to our hearts but are becoming a growing factor in the general cultural discussion of our era and it is great to contribute to the dialogue relating to these items. I guess the old English major desire to be involved in the analysis and discourse of these cultural artifacts never really dies.

• I’ve been spending a good bit of time recently with Bioware’s Dragon Age: Origins, as well as another Bioware title Mass Effect. I still do find time to put in a few rounds of Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead 2 each week as well.

Congrats to EA2D for some great showings in the Jayisgames.com Best of Casual Gameplay 2009 Awards.  Jay Is Games is well worth the italics in the place for casual games, and the users gave Mirror’s Edge 2D the #1 for action and Dragon Age Journeys #3 for strategy.  Here’s hoping for more awesomeness on the way.