Empire: Total War Campaign Multiplayer… please?

Remember when people finished games before releasing them? Games had their share of bugs to be sure, but for the most part the lack of any way to alter the shipped product post release meant that developers had to work long and hard to ensure that as many bugs as possible were squashed pre-release. This is not the case in this day and age, because while downloadable content allows for wonderful new experiences, it also allows developers to release unfinished products and expect player’s money and faith.

Hearts of Iron II: After Action Report

For those of you who don’t know what Hearts of Iron II is: it is the most awesome WWII simulator available on the market today.  Hearts of Iron III may supplant it, but that hasn’t been released yet so I can’t know for sure.  Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, I convinced Fiercemudcrab to give it a try.  At first, the enormity of the game seemed a little overwhelming and he didn’t seem to like it.  A couple of days later, however; he decided to give the game a fair chance to prove itself.  He was intrigued.  That made me so happy that I grabbed my laptop and rushed to his house where we proceeded to set up a LAN game so I could fully instruct him on the game’s many intricacies with a thoroughness that only a veteran of many years could provide.  After a couple of experimental games where we terrorized the world first as Sweden and Finland, then as Canada and Australia, we decided that we were ready to take up the cause of the Allies as the US and UK.  What follows is a summary of the incredible 15 game years of constant war and outrageous alternate endings to WWII that we could only wish would have really happened.

Noam Chomsky and Psycholinguistics: A Newcomer’s Rebuttal

Descartes’ meditations are a wonderful introspective look at the human condition and what it means to be a thinking entity. Whether or not Descartes’ work is truly wonderful has been a manner of contention, and slightly unnoticed has gone the debate over whether or not his works were written by a machine. One may be surprised to hear that it is actually commonplace to believe that his works, and all other literary endeavors are actually the byproduct of a biolinguistic machine that resides within each and every human.

Gaming and Stress

Playing games can be a wonderful stress reliever for me, sitting down to spend some time with Mario Galaxy wipes away the woes of the day. Yet games giveth and most certainly taketh away. Note the use of the picture of Geometry Wars 2. This was no mistake, some games can be the exact opposite of a stress reliever.

The Spore Patch of Fail

Well it would seem that Will Wright and his dream team are not infallible after all.  From what I have been reading on numerous forums and other blogs across the internet, and based off of my own experiences, it would seem that the recently released spore patch works only part of the time.  I’ve read both sides; either the patch works or it doesn’t.  Personally, I don’t know why the patch wouldn’t work for ALL computers.  Fiercemudcrab’s game runs fine with the new patch, and many others as well.  But why does mine not work?  Why does my computer, which surpasses all of the recommended system requirements, not seem to run the patch?

Cabela’s Dangerous Hunts 2009, I want a demo

I understand that the Cabela’s games do not usually get demos, but I feel that this one could definitely use it. I know what you’re thinking, why is he excited about this game? Being nuts about hiking, and always interested in survival, this Cabela’s game looks to be a fun romp through the wilderness. From what I have seen of the trailers, this game integrates survival elements so that you are no longer just killing for sport (something that I generally frown upon unless it is in video game form), I want to know. Badly. I also realize that games that don’t necessarily have huge budgets often don’t have the development allowance to create a demo, but please Cabela’s, just this once! The graphics also look to have taken a big leap forward, and I forgot to mention that the game retails at the affordable 39.99. I wish I had enough of the cash to just go out and buy it, but the way this fall is shaping up, it looks like we won’t see a review for this one until it shows up in the bargain bin. Sadface.

Urine the Movies! Microsoft’s slice of the casual pie.

Urine the Movies! A game in which players, no matter what age, gender or street cred, can join in the wonderful act of being in their very own movie about urination! Sadly, the real game sounds a bit worse. You’re in the Movies, demonstrated at Microsoft’s press conference at E3, is a game that throws ‘players’ into preset scenarios, the joy apparently comes from doing silly things that will then be put into the movies. As this is an obvious attempt to bring the casual masses over to that 200 dollar arcade sku and pick up a vision-cam while they are at it, I raise a simple question. When I was younger, we used to use a camcorder to make silly movies, which we could instantly throw in the vcr and watch on the television. Now one can get a digital video recorder that plugs straight into the tv, for much cheaper than the Xbox 360. So why then would one take the trouble to use You’re in the movies? It seems that this game shackles creativity’s legs and only allows it to wave its arms frantically, in other words, the potential for creativity and therefore fun is very limited with this ‘movie’ making application.

“Feel Smart” Movies

This is nothing more than a quick observation, a little something that was nagging at my brain. After having watched several movies this weekend, I realized that the majority of the movies we watch try very hard to make us feel smart, the movies we see as “intelligent” are often nothing more than predictable. The plot-twists are nothing more than a simple curve in the road that the audience can see coming a mile away. An example, yesterday was my first time seeing Spiderman, and when it came time for Peter to discover his dead uncle, even before the audience sees the worried crowd I knew that his uncle had been killed. I tell you this not to stroke my ego, far from it. I was ashamed to see that I gave myself a mental pat on the back for forseeing something that was relatively obvious. Come to think of it, I find myself “calling” all sorts of plot devices in movies, and I am sure that everyone else has moments such as this.

Nerds ftw: an undead PSA

This is just a friendly reminder of the coming zombie apocalypse, I would assure you that there is no reason to panic, but unfortunately I have a policy of telling the truth. Thankfully the good folks at the Zombie Preparedness Initiative have provided a general zombie awareness and response center online. After combing over the various sections, which include Food & Health, Running Away, Fighting Back, and Do-it-yourself, I have concluded that this is a fairly comprehensive zombie survival guide. While their methods cannot guarantee success, there are forums in which one can discuss proven zombie survival techniques.

Good Luck!

Our Virtual Reality

“When you get into the real world”- a phrase I have never understood. What distinguishes the world of a student from this so-called real world? Condescending adults always seem to act as elitists, the gatekeepers of their own world that serve only to diminish the reality of those that have yet to experience their age. Perhaps it is simply because they have difficulty identifying, maybe they simply do not approve of a young adult’s lifestyle, or possibly it is simply because they literally suppose that we are living in separate realities. In a way, students do live in their own “world”, most only have classes to worry about, and perhaps a part-time job.  What does this have to with video games? Allow that young people and older people can effectively be experiencing separate realities. Now it is not a stretch to say that the topic that all of my writing seems to gravitate towards can also be considered a separate reality unto itself.