Alex Livingston

Blog

  • Sarto Sunday: Drake Coat of Arms

    Speaking of Uncharted, here’s a T-shirt featuring a re-imagined coat of arms for the adventuring Drakes

    Get it here.

    FYI – looks like it was based on old Francis’s actual coat of arms, complete with latin motto.

    Image source and more info here.

    Note the identical image on the crest and the replacements of the helmet with a skull (archaeological or violent?) and of the ship with an airplane.  Very subtle and clever work.  Next time someone infers that gamers are illiterate button-mashing dorks, remember this little gem of design.

  • On Dragon Age: Journeys

     That’s how they getcha.

    I’ve been avoiding Dragon Age: Origins.  Don’t get me wrong — I love Bioware as much as, or perhaps even more than, the next guy.  I even played Jade Empire.  But when I found myself choosing a new game, I settled on the devil-may-care wit of Nathan Drake over the blood-besmirched plate-mail of this fellow, whoever he is.

    You know I’m right.

    I’m more of a Final Fantasy guy, as you may have guessed.  All my occidental swords-and-sorcery needs are fulfilled by Warcraft.  And then this happened.  Dragon Age: Journeys, a well-designed casual RPG built by something called EA2D.   It’s pretty!  It sounds good!  It’s fun!  Dang it all.

    While you’re watching The Biggest Loser, 
    we’re gonna killify things and loot their steaming bodies.

    (If there’s any doubt left in your mind that EA will someday control all of mankind’s dreams from atop a sheer platinum tower, please cast it aside.  Seriously, what else to Potter addicts, chop shop owners, and regular people have in common?  They have been right all along; it is, indeed, in the game.)

    So fine.  I play their little flash romp through a few times.  No big, right?  No need for me to fall into the endless pit of expense that is DAO right?  One might think that, but no.  No, the sly devils at EA added a few achievements to this little gem, and once these are successfully completed, content is unlocked in Origins.  I am now the proud owner of a Helm of the Deep, an Amulet of the War Mage, and a snazzy little belt called Embri’s Many Pockets.  This for a game I don’t even own.

    …yet.

  • A Pic from Geek Chic

    Just a quickie to point this out. 

    Gabe of Penny Arcade fame posted this pic via twitter, stating that it “is the DM’s Valet from Geek Chic“, and professing his love of it. 

    Oh yes.  There is a company that makes furniture specifically for the D&D crowd.  Aren’t you glad you know that?

  • The New Blog

    You can find my latest posts here: http://thegamerlifestyle.blogspot.com

  • The Phoenix Down Plaque

    In case of emergency, break glass.

    For a gamer, Christmas does not change from youth to adulthood.  Each wrapped package holds a potential game — like Schroedinger’s cat, it both is and is not until opened. 

    This season, one of the gifts in my home was a glass ornament containing a single feather.  “How pretty!” the masses exclaimed as they saw it on the tree, but in the deep recesses of my heart I knew better.  This would not be relegated to the attic when the tree came down.  This gift was to be co-opted. 

    A single feather protected in glass?  This could only be Phoenix Down, the ubiquitous Final Fantasy item which revives the dead.  A quick stop at Michael’s and a bit of time at the workbench and we’ve got ourselves some new decoration.

  • Audiobooks and the Nintendo DSi

    Perhaps this is what getting old feels like, when the people you idolized in college end up holding the mike on Morning Edition.

    I went through my standard morning routine: breakfast, cleanliness, then the drive in to work listening to whatever I’ve DLed on to my flashcard and jammed in the DSi.  This time it was a Neil Gaiman NPR piece on audiobooks.  “Ho ho,” I thought.  “If only our dear Mr. Gaiman knew I was listening to his story in the same way I listen to audiobooks!”. 

    Podiobooks, to be precisely correct.  Over the last few months I’ve been… ripping?  burning?  let’s just say “moving” Nathan Lowell‘s solar clipper series to my DSi.  Podiobooks breaks their content up into roughly 30-minute segments, which makes for very easy file management.

    There are a few complexities involved in moving audio to the DSi.  My process is as follows:

    1 – Download the desired audio files to my laptop.
    2 – Convert them to the required mp4 format using Foobar.  (Vive la open source!)
    3 – Drag and drop on to the flash card.
    4 – Pop it (out of the lappy) and lock it (into the DSi).
    5 –  Plug a male-to-male headphone cable into the “Aux In” port in the car.
    6 – Enjoy some space-faring adventure. 

    This is my first experience with audiobooks, and I have to confess to being completely hooked.  Lowell’s story, a melange of the high seas (think Master and Commander) and deep space, is pocked with memorable characters and is heavy on the dialogue, which makes for a listening experience somewhere between an old radio drama and a campfire story.  Reading it as a novel would be a very different experience; I would expect more detailed descriptions of the environments, and perhaps some of the more often repeated phrases (e.g. in Double Share, the protagonist shrugs.  A lot.) would fly past without notice like the ubiquitous “he said” does.  This begs a question as to whether or not the accessibility of the spoken word due to more developed technology is bringing about something akin to a revival of a near-dying art (which is addressed in Gaiman’s piece).  The listener certainly feels more of a connection to the author than seems likely via the page, at least not until PhD-levels of repeated readings. 

    As for the DSi’s sound function, I call it a win.  I have had no issues with the sound quality, though admittedly spoken word doesn’t necessarily require hi-fi-phononess.  The interface is easy and seems made for episodic content.  So give it a go.

  • PS3 Demos = Holiday Cheer

     Christmas Eve Eve is the time for friends, and yesterday my PS3 showed itself to be exactly that friend in need.  How to entertain the friend who prefers classic games?  The Namco Museum Essentials demo for some Galaga action .  Two-year-old obsessed with cars?  The Gran Turismo 5 time trial demo and lots of crashing into walls.  Group of tired friends looking to relax away from holiday madness?  The ultimate chill that is Flower.  Now if I can convince the family it’s OK to play Beatles Rock Band on Christmas proper, I’ll be in good shape.

  • Playstation Network Trophies on Facebook

    Now all can know of your gaming
    greatness.

    “Should I activate the PS3 trophy posts on FB?” a friend asked.  I answered quite strongly in the affirmative.  All of my social-network-capable friends and family get a little ping each time I knock out an achievement, download a demo, or buy a new song for Rock Band.  This can’t be any more annoying than updates on people’s mafias, right?

    The response, in the main, has been positive.  There has been some teasing to be sure, but far more conversations have been prompted:

    • so what do you think? is it all it’s cracked up to be?
    • what are you playen (sic) bro
    • hey they dont have this demo in the UK 🙁
    • How far have you gotten? I’m actually having dreams now about assasinating (sic) fat Italian dudes via a blade to the face.
     See?  People talking about your favorite hobby.  Now Blizzard needs to add this function to Warcraft…

  • Casual is the New Classic

    What if a flash game had been made in the 80’s?

    I’ve been tooling around with Double Edged, a nice-looking, simple flash game over on Nitrome. It’s pretty much just head right and slash at the baddies; very reminiscent of the old 8-bit games, as so many casual games are. I can’t help but wonder, though, what would this game have been like if it were released for the NES?

    No Way, No How, No Saving

    After sliding the big gray plastic Double Edged cartridge into the NES, the lucky player would have been given three lives and quite possibly a limited number of what us classic gamers remember as “continues”. If you wanted to beat this badboy, you better have slated a whole afternoon and better not ever make a mistake. Or maybe you would get some unintelligible passcode which your brother would write down for you. You know, the kid whose “A”s and “E”s look exactly the same.

    Oh yeah. This shouldn’t be problem at all.

    Now, Double Edged has twelve levels, or more correctly three levels and twelve save points. Short, I grant you. Just remember that Castlevania had six.

    The graphics would be much closer to awful

    Is this the face that launched a thousand titles?


    Pixel art has come a long way since Kid Icarus. Just playing as a character made out of more than nine little squares was a life-altering event. And shading? Utterly jaw-dropping.

    Here in Double Edged, not only do we enjoy well-crafted sprites and scenery, but we even get to enjoy multiple levels of moving background! And the characters have shadows!

    The mountains move! Devilry!

    You’ll take 2 axes, and you’ll like it

    How’d you get up there?

    Whoa, wait. You want to press up and move FARTHER AWAY? You are blowing my mind.

    In NES land, you will go left, right, or nowhere at all. Better find a way to jump that box, because there’s no going around it.

    “Well, I’m stumped. You win, Joker.”

    A Few Points

    For reasons that make little sense, the already-limited screen would have a points counter on it, hovering above you, as untouchable and judgmental as St. Peter. You know, so you could take a polaroid of your highest score and show it to your buddy Jay next time he came over. At least now you can shoot for an online leaderboard.

    Yep, it just keeps ticking away up there. Kinda creeps me out.

    That music will be stuck in your head for a very, very long time.

    Red X, you are beauty.

    So, somewhere along the line somebody figured out that not everybody likes chiptune? Being able to shut the damn music off is one of the better game developments in recent history. Sure, I like synthetic stylings as much as the next guy, but hearing the same eight bars on a loop as you repeatedly get killed by the same boss is just rubbing 8-bit salt in the wounds.

    Now how much would you pay?

    Minimum wage in the eighties was $3.35. NES games were fifty bucks. Nitrome.com is free. It’s a wonderful time to be alive.

  • The First Party Polo

    The Dream of Better Gamer Fashion Realized

    Ever give a gift to someone out of the blue? The sentence “hey, man, I got this for you” when uttered some time other than the Designated Gift-giving Holidays elicits a strange response from the recipient, a bitter cocktail of shame and terror. Fortunately, we have the holiday season, a socially-acceptable chance to act on those altruistic urges.

    Buying for a gamer can be… let’s just say “frustrating”. The Geek Nation is known for having oddly specific tastes, and trying to pick up a game, accessory, or other such notion is fraught with the sort of Christmas peril usually reserved for Eastern European folklore. So, what to do? Our friends at Penny Arcade have a solution.

    Some four years ago a posted an open letter to the suburban-trend-machine Hot Topic, asking, nay insisting they reconsider their marketing strategy as relates to gamers. A series of brilliant points were made about the fact that gamers aren’t all kids and that many want something more subtle, but their nascent genius died on the inter-vine, apparently.

    From the open letter:

    Quote:
    Here is what I would like to see from you: a series of unassuming polo shirts with corporate logos embroidered on the right breast, but the logos are from the evil corporations from various videogames. For starters, whip a few for Shinra Incorporated, Datadyne, and the Umbrella Corporation.
    :Endquote

    Too subtle, perhaps, but the concept holds. Stop giving us puerile junk. What is needed is some sort of gamer polo shirt. You know, for grown-ups.

    Enter the First Party v1.0 Launch Polo. Nice sharp shirt. Understated gamer logo.


    At last! We can wear our colors with pride, not gaudy ostentation. A shirt for that day when your office holiday party and buddy Jonesy’s LAN party are scheduled back-to-back.

    You see polos with tennis rackets, golf clubs, skis, sports franchise logos, heck, even an actual polo player from time to time. And finally now we see something for the more sophisticated lover of the virtual lifestyle.

    Now, the in-one’s-face style of gamer swag has its place, certainly. In fact, it can be rather rad. But it is nice to have an option. Sports fans have enjoyed this luxury for some time, and I can only hope the First Party shirts are a harbinger of better days.