If you like action movies and you haven’t seen “The Raid: Redemption” yet, drop what you’re doing and go see it. Either way, you can enjoy claymation cats killing each other without fear for movie spoilers.
via Lee Hardcastle
Imagine that you are one of the top World of Warcraft players in the world. You’re in a guild that is made up of people just like you, passionate about beating the hardest raid bosses in the game before anyone else in the world. You’re really proud of your accomplishments and stature in the game’s hardcore community, but what do you think your chances are of being able to brag about this stuff on a first date?
Now you have an idea of how lucky this dude on BBC reality show “World Series of Dating” was:
Sources describe the new Maps app as a forthcoming tentpole feature of iOS that will, in the words of one, “blow your head off.” I’m not quite sure what that means, and the source in question declined to elaborate, but it’s likely a reference to the photorealistic 3-D mapping tech Apple acquired when it purchased C3 Technologies. C3 did use missile-targeting technology to develop its gorgeous 3-D models of major cities, so …
“Missile-targeting technology”? Well, it’s a good thing Google’s not the company with that tech. With all of the personal data they’re collecting on us, “blow your head off” might have a more literal meaning. *rimshot*
But seriously, the Maps iOS app is something that needs to be overhauled, given that no truly significant functionality has been added to it since the launch of the original iPhone. I’m not sure 3D mapping is something that’ll be practically useful on a day to day basis, but I would love some more turn-by-turn navigation and localized search capabilities at the very least.
via AllThingsD.
I can think of few other directors today who engender a similar amount of fan passion that Mr. Whedon does. The fact that he took the time to write a sincerely grateful, yet humorously self-deprecating post to his biggest fans after the biggest domestic movie opening weekend of all time speaks volumes to why he’s so beloved.
Joss Whedon interviewing himself:
RDA: What do you feel is the greatest achievement of “the Avoiders”?
JW: Getting “mewling quim” out there to the masses. Also, Hulk.
For the record, I had to look up what “mewling quim” means and when I did I could do nothing but smile and give Joss a mental high five.
Well played, sir. Well played.
via Whedonesque.com.
Think you had enough The Walking Dead after that mess of a season two ended on AMC? As much as you might be, try to carve out a couple hours to at least try the first episode of Telltale’s new five-part “adventure” game on PC/Mac, PS3, and Xbox 360. I wrote a full review for Comics Alliance that you can peruse at your leisure if you feel so inclined, but suffice to say, I dug the characters in this game way more than the A-holes on the AMC series. I mean seriously, could those people be any less likable? (If you’ve seen Season Two, I know you’re with me)
Surprisingly (or maybe not so surprisingly if you aren’t a fan of the TV series), the new characters introduced in “A New Day” are more likable than their television brethren. Lee’s a complicated guy with a past shrouded in mystery. He’s not necessarily the natural “leader” that Rick is and that allows for a more interesting dynamic when you encounter characters in the game. Clementine, the little girl you meet early on in the game, is everything that Carl isn’t on the show. She’s vulnerable and innocent, yet strong and resourceful when called upon to be. Playing through the game, I actually began to care for her and wanted to go out of my way to protect her. That’s something that I can’t say the same for any character on the show.
The game as a whole isn’t too bad, either. It’s more of an “interactive story” than a traditional Sierra adventure game, but that’s OK, because I was always terrible at those and usually needed help with them anyway. At $5 ($4 if you get a season pass on the PS3), it’s not a bad price for a couple hours of good episodic writing. Telltale is ambitiously setting up the choices you make in this game to really differentiate the story that you get from each play through. Kinda like Mass Effect with less shooting, if you will. Let’s just hope the ending doesn’t piss off as many people as that game did.
Read my full review on Comics Alliance.
A poster going by gregSTORM on the Xbox 360 Achievements forums was the first one to cross the finish line. He used a program to generate a list of all the possible solutions, and after entering around 1,300 of them by hand, to his great surprise… he managed to open the monolith. It was just before 3pm PST Wednesday, roughly five days after the game’s release.
This is exactly the biggest problem I have with Fez’s codebreaking “second game.” If I have to code a program to brute force solutions to your video game puzzle, something’s definitely wrong with the design of the game.
(Or maybe that was Polytron’s point. Either way, I think it’s pretty silly to make the most interesting parts of the game so obtuse that the vast majority of players won’t even get to see, much less solve.)
via Ars Technica.
So I finally finished Mass Effect 3 the other day with the “best” possible ending. I knew going in that there was a huge internet backlash against the ending, but didn’t know the details of the complaints. After finishing the game, I had to admit that I wasn’t exactly raging against the machine. Sure, I was a little disappointed at the Deus Ex Machina aspects of the ending, but when one of the key plot drivers in the game is already a Deus Ex Machina, it didn’t come out of left field. Maybe I’m just a jaded video game player who expects all game endings to be either short and/or unfulfilled. Frankly, it’s more about the journey than the destination for me in playing games, and I felt that’s especially true in the case of the Mass Effect Trilogy.
That being said, once I started down the rabbit hole (spoilers of the game in the thread) of reading about the complaints people had about the ending, I began to get more and more indignant alongside them. (plus some lulz with internet memeing!) Their arguments made logical sense to me and, hell, even the BBB felt that Bioware was guilty of “false advertising!”
After a few days to distance myself from the game, I ultimately did not feel outraged enough to continue fretting about what might have been a better ending to a video game trilogy. I bought and read Geoff Keighley’s very interesting behind the scenes “Final Hours of Mass Effect 3” iPad piece and it became pretty apparent that Bioware was crunched for time in order to make a ship date.
Bioware’s announcement last week of an “extended cut” piece of DLC essentially confirmed that the ending was a bit threadbare, probably due to time constraints. I’ll check it out whenever it comes out, but without any illusions that it will be particularly life-changing or anything of the sort. I had a great run with the crew of the Normandy as Commander Shepard and will probably remember the interactions I had with my crewmates and the richest extraterrestrial history this side of Star Wars more than anything else.
Why are you releasing the Extended Cut DLC?
Though we remain committed and are proud of the artistic choices we made in the main game, we are aware that there are some fans who would like more closure to Mass Effect 3. The goal of the DLC is not to provide a new ending to the game, rather to offer fans additional context and answers to the end of Commander Shepard’s story.
Fez is probably the Indie game equivalent to Chinese Democracy. Five years in development, it’s won Independent Games Festival awards in both 2012 and in 2008. Yeah, that statement made me do a double take too. I’ll admit to not following the game’s development saga too closely over the years, except for noticing that Phil Fish, the game’s creator, is apparently a huge cock. But knowing that some of the best creative minds are giant douches, I didn’t hold it against him when buying and playing the game.
Like many recent platformers, there’s essentially two games in Fez: the “easy” one which leads you to a minimum number of cubes to see the game’s ending and the “hard” one, which tasks you to collect all of the game’s hidden cubes in order to see the “true” ending.The game is essentially a 2D platformer with the “twist” of being able to rotate the environment in four directions, kinda like rotating a cube around. The basic gameplay is pleasant enough, but isn’t terribly mindblowing, especially if you’ve played Echochrome before. I imagine those who haven’t seen the MC Escher-like trick of 3D to 2D perception platforming would get a kick out of playing Fez for the first time.
For those not going for the “hard” anti-cubes, the game quickly degenerates into a simple “collect the shiny thing” set of tasks. That’s not necessarily a negative thing, especially for those who love nostalgic 8-bit gaming, but it does leave Fez as simply an ok to “good” game played in that way. The fact that the game is riddled with technical issues like slowdown, choppy graphic transitions, and outright game crashes to dashboard doesn’t help matters much. However, due to the way the game is presented at times, it does give apologists the explanation that these technical bugs are “working as intended” as an artistic statement.
The “hard” game in Fez is a doozy and it’s where I imagine most of the rave reviews and “mindblowing experience” reactions to the game are coming from. It’s essentially a hardcore cryptography/linguistics challenge with some neat fourth-wall breaking moments. For example, you’ll have to break out your smartphone’s QR code reader in order to get a button sequence to get one of the anti-cubes. Or, you’ll have to look at Fez’s achievement list for a clue towards getting another. From reading the GAF, it appears that obtaining many of these anti-cubes requires you to successfully decrypt things like a hieroglyphics alphabet along or a Tetris block orientation code. In full disclosure, I had zero interest in whipping out my Moleskine and doing a Robert Langdon impersonation so as soon as I had the required number of “obvious” cubes to watch the game’s ending, I did.
All of these puzzles are fairly obtuse, and there is no handholding or guiding by the game. It’s probably the most frustrating part of this game because there’s barely any context for solving most of the puzzles. One of the best qualities of Braid I thought, was the elegance in which you are introduced to each puzzle. Jonathan Blow nailed the difficulty curve and environment presentation to give you all the tools that you needed to solve the game’s puzzles by simply using the techniques that you’ve practiced throughout the game. Fez, by contrast, requires you to have the mentality to be able to perceive and decode the subtle “clues” in random game locations. If you didn’t make a Rosetta Stone for the symbols (or didn’t want to do that work), well tough noogies, you’re locked out of fully completing this game.
If you’re the type of person who loves ARGs and assembling pieces of a Rosetta Stone while you explore environments, then you should stop reading right now and go give Fez all your money. If you’re like me, and prefer to watch Tom Hanks solve the Da Vinci Code rather than do the work yourself, then you’re probably going to be less impressed with Fez. It’s not a bad game, but it’s certainly not the Indie masterpiece that 5 years of hype may have let you believe.
(Also, the “normal” ending to this game is predictably very abstract with a pretentious tone. If you’re expecting any insightful, life-changing revelations from playing through Fez, you’d get more answers from the Mass Effect 3 ending than this game.)
This might wow those more easily hypnotized by “ZOMG THIS IS LIKE LIVING IN THE FUTURE” prototype gadgets, but the likelihood of Glass shipping as an actual product (much less be widely adopted) is very small. On top of that, who the hell wants to be “that guy” walking around a city looking like a cyborg cosplayer who talks to himself? I feel silly enough using Siri in public and that’s even with the option to appear like I’m talking on the phone.
That being said, there is something inherently neat about a hands-free, portable display device. Stuff like the HUD navigation on foot and being able to share a video feed of what you’re seeing is pretty cool stuff.
In other words, I’m just waiting for the cybernetic implant version of Glass before I get excited.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that people who play Fantasy Sports are a bit more affluent than the average person. But does it really not affect workplace productivity?
via Infographic: The Fantasy Sports Economy – Culture – GOOD.