Archives for “Games”
“I suppose we could say that the two games are equally fun, and that there’s room in this world for both, but FUCK THAT. History needs to know which is best, so I’m going to award victory who whichever game’s developer sends me the best picture of the other game’s main character wearing a woman’s [...]
Long story short: Gabe and Tycho, the guys who make Penny Arcade and Scott, who makes PvP, are playing a game of Dungeons and Dragons being run by Chris Perkins from the R&D section at Wizards of the Coast (who make D&D). They recorded those sessions, and put them online as podcasts. Even if you [...]
Dear Zoe, You are two years old, and it is absolutely crazy how much you have changed and grown lately. You’ve recently started going to Co-Op daycare, started jumping and doing somersaults, become fascinated with reading and writing, and singing and talking. You are always busy and high energy, and everyone thinks you’re adorable.
Left 4 Dead is a cooperative shooter. You play one of four survivors fighting hoards of “infected.” There are four stories, each with five chapters, detailing the survivors escaping from a variety of zombie-movie standards, such as fighting through a hospital to a helicopter pickup on the roof, or getting to the airport to get [...]
While I enjoyed Fable 1, I never finished it. Like many of Lionhead’s games, it fell victim to the overhyping of Peter Molyneux. So when Fable 2 was announced, I watched the reviews carefully before buying. In the end, I thought it sounded interesting enough to give it a shot, and I’m glad I did. [...]
I made the mistake of reviewing both Fallout 3 and Gears of War 2 before I had finished them. I tend to play pretty slowly, and I was afraid that if I waited until I beat the games, then the reviews would be pointless. So I played both games for a few hours, and then [...]
If you liked Gears 1, you’ll like this one. It’s more of the same, with slightly better graphics. One thing I liked is that there’s a little more color. The world is still mostly brown and gray, but as they walk through cities and forests, you get to see that the Gears world is not, [...]
I’ve only played for a few hours, and I’ve only made it a few hundred feet outside the Vault so far, but what I’ve seen, I like very much. The character creation system is clever, starting you out as a baby, and learning how to move around and interact with people. Eventually you take an [...]
Milo and his parents are visiting us this week, so I thought I’d post this video of a game Milo was playing with Dave at the park a few weeks ago. Milo would pick up a handful of bark chips, and then chase Dave around trying to throw them on his shoes. When he threw [...]
I was just looking through my draft posts and noticed that I never actually posted my One Paragraph Review for Mass Effect. And that’s sad, because I absolutely loved the game. In fact, the reason I didn’t post the review is because I decided I didn’t want to review it until I beat the game, [...]
“The best part about ‘couch multiplayer’ is no pre-pubescent jackasses screaming racial slurs into a headset. If anybody on a couch gets out of line, restoring order is only a punch away.” – Patrick Alexander in You’re Doing it Wrong
In a nutshell, GTA4 keeps everything good about the previous games, while dramatically improving most of the annoyances. The driving is slightly more challenging — if only because it’s actually difficult to drive at a reasonable speed that won’t result in you flying through the windshield in a head-on collision — but when you pull [...]
Staying home sick from work and puking my guts out earlier in the day is apparently no excuse for canceling Halo night, especially not when it happens to be the day the Legendary Map Pack gets released. So last night the boys came over and we fired up the old 360 to test out the [...]
Zach and Miles made a neat flash game called Space Kitty that combines my love of space-physics simulation and kitties! Jump from planet to planet, slingshot yourself around the gravity wells, and bring adorable kitties home from inhospitable asteroids!
I was going to write a review, but instead I’m going to quote from an email Miles sent me, because he puts it better than I ever could: “It cracks me up how schizophrenic it is between apocalyptic horror and tongue-in-cheek wish fulfillment. On the one hand: Alien slavers colonize the earth! They’re sterilizing humanity, [...]
Portal is absolutely good. The only criticism I have is that it’s really short. That said, in the commentary track, the developers mention that they’re just starting to explore this type of game, so it seems likely that we’ll see more in the future. The gameplay is nice and simple. You wake up in a [...]
The promise we got was that Halo 2 would be “a lot like Halo 1, only it’s Halo 1 on fire, going 130 miles per hour through a hospital zone, being chased by helicopters and ninjas… And the ninjas are all on fire, too.” It wasn’t. It was a disappointing sequel in every respect except [...]
Years ago, Miles described to me a game that he wanted to make where your character avoided combat in favor of setting elaborate traps for your enemies. Bioshock is that game. Yes, it’s a shooter, and you can grab your guns and slug it out with the bad guys — but the really interesting bits [...]
My 360 came home yesterday. Inside the package was the console, a 1-month Xbox Live Gold membership card, and a letter explaining that to accelerate my repair, they had sent me a different console. I forget the exact wording now, but I think it’s refurbished, not new. As an apology, the letter explained they had [...]
My 360 is on the way home to me! I got the box to ship it to Microsoft on the 16th, and they received it on the 18th, and then today I got this email: Dear Scott Vandehey, Xbox Customer Support Service Request ID #: XXX Serial Number: XXX Good news, your Xbox console has [...]
A few weeks back, you may have seen that the Halo 3 Achievements were leaked. If you’re like me, you gave that list a quick look, and saw that it was a nice mix of single and multiplayer challenges, and didn’t think much more about it. However, I just noticed something that made me very [...]
Yesterday my xbox 360 died. Kinda funny that it happened just a day after Microsoft announces that they’re extending the warranties, but it doesn’t really apply to me, since they only extended the warranty for one specific error (three red lights), which mine doesn’t have, and it’s a moot point anyways, since my 360 is [...]
The teaser trailer for Fallout 3 is like a love letter from Bethesda to the fans of the series. It’s a clear communication that we don’t need to worry. They get it. The music and the post-apocalyptic scene show us that they understand the look and feel of this world. The power armor and the [...]
I have mixed feelings about the beta. On the one hand, it’s totally good. The gameplay is exactly what you would expect – sort of a synthesis of the best parts of Halo and Halo 2. The feeling is familiar, all the new weapons and gadgets really enhance the experience, and the graphics are beautiful. [...]
