FyreHaar: your profile pic looks like your portrait as a business chimp
SonicRob: business chimp?
FyreHaar: A chimp you is in business
SonicRob: like an ape in a suit?
FyreHaar: yeah
Posts Tagged ‘What?’
Chat Box
Sunday, August 22nd, 2010Chat Box
Tuesday, July 6th, 2010FyreHaar: I don’t know man
FyreHaar: my energy just got sapped
SonicRob: I am tired
SonicRob: I don’t want to be here anymore
SonicRob: today
FyreHaar: ditto
FyreHaar: let’s make a pact
SonicRob: we must bring salvation back
SonicRob: where there is love
SonicRob: I’ll be there
FyreHaar: what song is that
SonicRob: “I’ll Be There”
FyreHaar: did you just wuote Michael Jackson at me?
FyreHaar: WTF man!
SonicRob: uh
FyreHaar: and why do you know that?
SonicRob: would it be better if I quoted Mariah Carey at you?
FyreHaar: no!
SonicRob: The Baker listens to Kiss-Fm! I can’t help it!
At the Intersection of Nerd and Geek
Wednesday, June 30th, 2010I haven’t got a whole lot I can add to these photos of Spanish case modder pinchillo’s Dreadnought PC case. Win, dude. Pretty much win forever.
Yeah, that’s a computer case.
Front On
Wednesday, May 26th, 2010Hey, ShackNews has brand new information on Front Mission Evolved, the latest in the long-running mech strategy game that I used to really like back on the PS1! It’s supposed to be coming out any day now, so I’m really looking forward to some really polished pre-release publicity stuff! Let’s dig in:
Previously due during the vague “Spring 2010″ timeframe, Double Helix’s mech-tastic action game Front Mission Evolved will now arrive at North American retailers in PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 form on September 14, 2010.
Oh. Dang. Well, I guess they’re taking the time to really do the game right!
Alongside the release date, publisher Square Enix offered up a new trailer and several new screenshots, plus word that the PC edition will be playable in stereoscopic 3D.
I… wait, what? Why? What could adding 3-d headache-o-vision add? I could see it maybe being relevant for an action title, but certainly not for a turn-based strategy title.
Evolved marks a departure from traditional Front Mission entries, focusing on real-time third-person action instead of the turn-based strategy the series is known for. In addition to its single-player campaign, Evolved will also pack four multiplayer modes and the ability for players to customize their “wanzers” with a variety of parts and weapons.
…
So instead of the nichey little strategy title with the ridiculous length and deep squad customization that I was looking forward to, you’re doing the second most played-out genre possible – right after FPS – and tossing in a schlocky flavor-of-the-month technology gimmick as well?
*Sigh* If I was uninterested in Front Mission Evolved before, I’m downright incurious now. I’d be willing to give it a chance on its own terms as a new action title, but all the franchise goodwill I had saved up is out the window now.
-ssr
And The Award for Honest Reflection Upon Your Business Model That You Probably Oughtn’t to Have Told a Reporter Goes To:
Wednesday, May 19th, 2010Crystal Dynamics’ global brand director Karl Stewart, for telling CVG in all earnestness:
“I think the model as we see it right now is a frail one. Having the used market is not beneficial to any of us.”
Which is a completely true and honest statement, for values of the word “us” that do not include the subset “customers”. Try to keep that in mind the next time you decide to sling flame online in the name of your favorite major game corporation.
This Project $10 thing from EA is starting to get a bit out of hand. I didn’t particularly care when it was just extra stuff like costumes and weapons that aren’t part of the core experience of a game; in fact, I thought it was a clever way to incentivize buying a new title. The new deal, where sports games will cost an extra $10 to play online if bought used, flips that all upside down. It’s taken what originally sounded like a reasonable proposal – here’s a nice present if you do things the way that’s good for us – and turns it into a muscle play. I can’t imagine nearly as many people are going to stick up for the “buy it new or it’s broken and you’ll pay to fix it” model as were willing to speak out in favor of new-game bonuses. We’re not far now from simply having console games that require a 1-time activation code – free with a new copy, $60 otherwise – to work at all. we’ve already taken the leap that gets us about halfway there.
In Which Rob Makes a Stupid Assumption, Surprising Nobody
Wednesday, April 28th, 2010Surely I can’t have been the only who, hearing that a downloadable survival horror game called Hydrophobia has been announced for later in the year, immediately assumed that it was a gritty reboot of Paperboy that followed the harrowing tale of a young cyclist bitten by an improperly restrained Rottweiler and his subsequent descent into rabies-induced madness? I mean, that’s the first thing that springs to mind, right?
After all, as we all know, the fear of water is called aquaphobia, so if the game was about scary things happening in water, they’d have called it that.
Sweet Jesus, don't let them get me.
-ssr
Assassin’s Creed by Harlequin!
Wednesday, February 24th, 2010I am right in the meat of Assassin’s Creed II right now and loving it. I adored the original and this has improved on the experience. It’s just super fun and I can’t wait for each new environment to play around in.
Ubisoft publishing Assassin’s Creed II Novel
I confess that I was, for an instant, totally into this.
More Ezio, more Assassin’s Creed, it’s a good thing, right? More explanation of his life, more revealed about Altair perhaps. More juicy, juicy plot! Romance, action, assassinations!
Shite.
I like running randomly over roofs, stealing every treasure I can find, making my horse gallop a lot and generally fucking around. I like jumping off of roofs without the leap of faith and seeing how far I can fall without dying. They will leave that out. Where in the novel will Ezio use all of his attacks and movements in the Animus loading screen to make a funky disco dance? Where!?
I don’t want to read their interpretation of how I should be playing the game and the adaptation of my playing style would be boring reading. Why don’t they just use the money they are spending on this to make more DLC?
[h/t to Destructiod]
Chat Box
Wednesday, January 27th, 2010Sonic Rob: Apple just announced their new tablet
Sonic Rob: the website calls it “magical”
FyreHaar: good lord
FyreHaar: kill that marketing dude
Sonic Rob: yeah
Sonic Rob: I just keep thinking of the chicken fucker in South Park
Sonic Rob: “Oh, that’s a very magical tablet!”
Michael Moore Should Stick to Documentaries
Tuesday, December 29th, 2009Via Primer, came across Slashfilm’s compilation of reactions to Avatar from various nerd-film leading lights. Many are pleasantly gushy, though I’d frankly be more interested to read them when
A) The 3-D IMAX dopamine rush has worn off of these poor fellows and a few months’ time has restored some perspective and
B) The Oscar-quote/poster-quote/get-on-the-internet-hype-train vibe has worn off a bit.
Still, these are professional nerds who make nerdy movies for the entertainment of nerds, and perhaps their initial reaction is valuable if only to make an estimate of the immediate sensation the film might grant another nerd (i.e. me) should he choose to see it. That is to say, if all these guys are excited, maybe that’s a good sign.
But then, halfway through the list, Michael Moore (who apparently counts as nerdy based on his girth and glasses) lets loose this glistening nugget of a tweet:
“Go see Avatar – a brilliant movie 4 our times. Don’t worry if theater doesn’t have 3D – the 2D is awesome & it’s all about the story anyway!”
It kind of speaks for itself, but if you need it spelled out: the plot in Avatar is not what it’s all about. I already know the plot – without having seen the film – because it was delivered in its entirety in every trailer for the film. The plot is a contrivance that allows for the effects to be delivered. The plot is a cellophane-thin culture on which the visual trickery is grown. The plot is a familiar, slender bouquet of tropes on which you may comfortably hang your sense of understanding in order to anchor it in the face of a punishing visual assault.
I am not being mean or judgmental when I say these things; I don’t even mean it as a criticism, really. It’s just that kind of movie. Hell, it’s being marketed as that kind of movie. But if Michael Moore thinks that a $300 million 3-D sci-fi remake of Dances With Wolves is a movie for our times thanks to its story, he is off his ass.
-ssr
Abu Gaga
Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009Did anyone else come across the video for Bianca* Knowles’ “Video Phone” (song far inferior to decade-old precursor “Picture Phone” by the Sub Debs; so ya know) and choke on their Pepsi when the writhing Abu Ghraib prisoners appear, grinding their bodies against the curvaceous young singer’s supple form like so many Boschian incubi? I know that what’s really going on with the blue-hooded, dark-skinned men is that they were supposed to have their heads blue-screened out and replaced with cameras (as seen elsewhere in the video), but apparently they ran out of time, forgot to do this bit, or couldn’t figure out a good way to transition from the naked skin of the dancers to the CG camera. Hell, for all I know the director saw the effect and liked it. But there’s no way anymore to see an image like that and not flash, for a moment, to the guy standing on the box with the wires on his hands.
Combine that with the constant imagery of guns in the video and the presence of Lady Gaga who, like Saddam Hussein, is responsible for the deaths of thousands of Kurds, and you can’t help but see the whole piece as a teasing commentary on the repressed sexual desire that America sublimates into violence in general and news coverage of the Middle East wars in particular.
No idea what’s up with the weird homage to Tarantino at the start, tho.
Here is the video, embedded in much the same way that Geraldo Rivera was during the invasion of Iraq. Concidence? I think not:
-ssr
* I know what her name is. “Beyonce” looks to me like a phonetic spelling of how someone might pronounce “Bianca” if they had no idea how it’s actually meant to be said. Ha ha.
