Those bubbles worry me
Now, that’s serious manspreading. Geralt of Rivia has got hisself some awful babysoft feet, don’t he? My tootsies are gnarlier than that and I’m not a 100-year-old professional monster slayer.
That’s how you know it’s fantasy. That, and the multicolored enchanted lobster that’s just about to crawl into the tub.
Have a good weekend! Y’all know what I’ll be doing.
September 18, 2015 — 10:15 pm
Comments: 9
See ya in the Spring
Yeah, I finally broke down and bought this thing. Hey, it was 30% off! Which is…still a shit-ton more money than I’m usually willing to pay for a game.
But I knew I would love this one.
And I do.
I wondered if any enterprising soul had made reproductions of that pendant he wears around his neck. Nah. Just, like, EVERYBODY.
‘Scuse me. Gotta go kill a griffin. Signed a contract.
September 17, 2015 — 10:12 pm
Comments: 14
Lo Wang? Really?
I started this game tonight. Shadow Warrior.
Yeah, protagonist is Lo Wang. When I type “shadow warrior” into Google, the auto-complete I get is “wang jokes.” In the game, though, he’s more of a doughy chainsmoking Japanese who looks like he’d be happier playing Bingo. Or slots. What do they play in those huge casinos, anyway? Wait, do the Japanese do that, or just the Chinese?
I’m not far in, and already I have a wise-cracking demon sidekick, a bunch of smartass fortune cookies, and I’m pretty sure that’s Godzilla in the distance. Huh.
Honestly, I don’t know how anyone can be offended by the casual sexism of video games. It’s so hilariously stupid.
August 24, 2015 — 9:50 pm
Comments: 10
Bohemia, yo
This happy chappy is Daniel Vávra, a Czech video game developer. Long story short, he had an idea for a videogame, tried to get funding, was told all anybody wants is puzzles to play on iPhones, took his idea to Kickstarter. He was trying to get half a million to start, he got nearly $2.5 million to date (he has another corporate backer, as well – it’s a big team and a long lead time).
The game looks gorgeous. It’s set in a meticulously recreated 15th century Bohemia. They’ve consulted historians and architects, rotoscoped sword fighters, bought topo maps of the area, really trying to nail the era down as fully and accurately as they can. No magic (their slogan is “dungeons, no dragons”). You have to eat and sleep and make homemade medicines.
It’s called Kingdom Come: Redemption. I know most of you aren’t gamers, and I don’t usually recommend early access, but these guys are the real deal. They’re professionals and they’ve hit all their deadlines. The game is currently in early alpha (they’re calling it “technical alpha”; they’re mostly looking for basic playability glitches. Flying horses and chickens that walk through walls). Due out for reals in a year.
The t-shirt? Vávra is under heavy fire because there aren’t any people of color in the game. In 15th C Bohemia. He doesn’t seem too bothered.
Don’t think this is a bit of SJW fluff. This is a thing now. The Witcher — a popular series of games based on Slavic myth — has been dinged recently because everybody in it is Slavic.
And some silly grad student at the University of Leeds has written a paper — or put together a presentation, it’s not clear — on how ‘medievally-themed video games are a space where whiteness can be anchored, in a “happy history” where a world is free of multiculturalism and white guilt’.
Unfortunately for her, she picked the worst possible game to illustrate this. Skyrim is a great game in a fantasy medieval Nordic setting, but it’s completely multicultural and, at times, annoyingly preachy and 21st C about it. Her research seems to have been entirely interrogating players without investigating the game at all.
May Talos smite her in the ass for it.
Oh, yeah: the commenter Formerly known as Skeptic has won the dick with Bobbi Kristina Brown. They finally unplugged the poor kid and let her go. See you back here on Friday for Dead Pool Round 76.
July 27, 2015 — 9:39 pm
Comments: 19
Work…
Sorry. Got jammed up with, ummm…work. Yeah, that’s it.
I definitely wasn’t playing Far Cry 4 what I bought myself for my birthday, prancing around the Himalayas with Booboo, my trained attack tiger.
You don’t get the tiger all the time. Just when you’re in Shangri La, which may or may not be a drug induced state.
It’s basically the identical game as Far Cry 3, except instead of being a white boy running around killing black men on a Caribbean island, you’re a Tibetan boy running around killing Tibetan men in a mountainous backwater. I never read game reviews, but I’d be amazed if they didn’t get lots of criticism for the first one for the skin color thing (though they didn’t take out the part where you kill endangered species for their skins so you can make useful fashion accessories).
Anyway, it’s very pretty and very fun and I definitely wasn’t playing that instead of doing whatever it is I should have been doing.
May 28, 2015 — 9:54 pm
Comments: 7
So I got to be a Chinese guy, which was cool
I just finished Sleeping Dogs, an excellent open world shoot-’em up game set in Hong Kong. Sadly, it isn’t a meticulous building-by-building recreation of the town (like some of the Grand Theft Auto game settings are supposed to be), but it’s broadly faithful to the layout and lots more fun to drive in. On the sidewalk? Be our guest.
Yeah, I know most of my readers don’t do games, but I’m clearing the deck of a backlog. May, as you might remember, is my Birthday Month and I plan to play a lot of new stuff to celebrate.
Anyway, Wei Shen — your game dude — is forever stopping at a street vendor for duck or ice cream or noodles. Or the one that always gets to me in the movies: pork buns. Makes me crazy hungry for Chinese. Has anybody had one of these pork buns? (I’m looking at you, Bob). For some reason, they look so soft and squidgy and appealing, but I didn’t have the courage to cook something I’d never seen in the flesh before. Also, I don’t have a steamer.
So I made pot-stickers, AKA Pekin ravioli, AKA Pekin dumplings. They were delicious. I think I ruined my dinner.
April 20, 2015 — 9:25 pm
Comments: 16
‘Murica!
That little boy looks hella jacked — and you would be too, if dad bought you a science kit with four (4!) different kinds of uranium ore, three (3!) separate radiation sources and a geiger counter, so you could chart the progress of your radioactive ass.
It’s American (of course it is), it was only available in 1951-2 and it cost $50, which was a lot of moolah. The one thing I can’t find — and I’ve looked up every article I could on this thing — is whether it was actually dangerous. I assume, not very.
It goes on display at the Ulster Museum next month, in an exhibition called Elements.
When I was a little girl, we had a chip of…radium, I guess. Something radioactive and glowy. One of the curiosities my grandfather collected. It was in a thick glass cylinder and I would often take it into the closet, close the door and hold it up to my eye for long, loving looks.
Which is why my right eye can see into Valhalla.
February 16, 2015 — 9:49 pm
Comments: 17
Here we go — whee…!
Thanks to the various pre-Christmas sales, I’ve got a glut of unplayed games waiting for my attention but, goshdarnit, I enjoyed Far Cry 3 so much, I’m playing it through again. Just the really fun bits.
Should I worry that my “really fun bits” were finding a comfy perch on a high hillside and picking off pirates with a heavily modified sniper rifle? Mmmmmmnah.
Anyway, I declare the holidays officially begun. Expect blogging to be light and lame for the duration. That’s my promise to you!
Good weekend, and let ‘er rip!
December 19, 2014 — 9:57 pm
Comments: 13
Have videogames gone too far?
So, Steam informs me I can get early access to this today. Um, yay?
If you watch the videos, it’s not all that far outside the bounds for a video game: slice of bread and its desperate quest to become toast. You oonch your way along one corner at a time trying to find ways to immolate yourself.
For six quid, I…no. Not really my thing. Not enough blood.
December 3, 2014 — 8:31 pm
Comments: 16
Heh.
Welp, it’s Steam Sale time again, that Amok Time when Valve cuts prices so low you buy a ton of shit you don’t need and somehow believe you’ve saved a bunch of money. Ninety percent off Goat Simulator? Sign me up!
So I was browsing titles and came across Castlevania — you play an old and weary Dracula, yearning to retire. But first you have to fight your boss, Satan, to get out of your contract. It is rated 17+ for Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Language, Nudity.
The punters loved it. The critics, not so much. In fact, it got a mysteriously low Metascore of 58 (user votes are excluded from Metascore). A halfway decent game is always going to be 80+. Then I noticed the disclaimer above.
For those who haven’t been following this particularly complicated internet shit-storm, the simple version is: pro-#GamerGate = people who love videogames just the way they are. Anti-#GamerGate = people who think today’s video games promote violence and sexism and would like to see that change. Much of the professional gaming press — like our lefty betters in journalism everywhere — are firmly in Column B.
See the little #GamerGate recommends icon? Yeah. Steam is promoting games off of the back of the #GamerGate controversy. Gabe Newell is a sooper genius.
Hells yes I bought Castlevania.
And, um, Goat Simulator, too.
Good weekend, folks. Assuming you’ve shaken off the tryptophan coma yet.
November 28, 2014 — 10:06 pm
Comments: 20