Fyrehaar: dude
Fyrehaar: reviews of Dragon tattoo
Fyrehaar: that it is shallow
Fyrehaar: no connection to the characters
Fyrehaar: like, it looks good
Fyrehaar: but that is it
Sonic Rob: SF Gate review has massive, massive fucking spoilers
Sonic Rob: I get why, cause otherwise it’s so shocking you’ll fucking die
Sonic Rob: but goddammit, you can’t do that shit
Fyrehaar: they just assume everyone has read it
Fyrehaar: I feel like a lot of people who read the book didn’t get it at all
Continue reading Chat Box: Now With SPOILERS
Author: Sonic Rob
Chat Box: Technology
Sonic Rob: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_Versatile_Disc
Sonic Rob: when is this shit coming out?
Fyrehaar: cool
Sonic Rob: they’ve had the tech for like 5 or 6 years, it’s just not at consumer price levels yet
Sonic Rob: and now with cloud and streaming, physical media may be done
Fyrehaar: yeah
Sonic Rob: it’s the saber-toothed tiger of optical disc media
Fyrehaar: rawr!!!
First Thoughts: Assassin’s Creed: Revelations Story Mode
Story-Spoiler Free.
Assassin’s Creed is starting to feel a lot like Madden NFL in a weird way. The crunchy toast of the play mechanics and user experience have been unchanged for several years now, while various marmalade-y experiments have been slathered on top of it and then scraped off in disgust or retained for next year’s bite. Revelations has pretty much everything you liked about Brotherhood in abundance, and probably has all the stuff you didn’t like lurking about as well. The stuff that’s unique to this entry is all awkward at best and sort of crap at its worst, and Revelations exudes the desperate musk of a franchise trying to justify too many releases too close together by piling on features for the sake of features.
Continue reading First Thoughts: Assassin’s Creed: Revelations Story Mode
New Space Marine Maps & Modes Announced, Corpse of Last Week’s Mode Not Cold Yet
Relic has announced a new DLC pack just days after we XBox-owning peons were finally allowed to download and then ignore the Exterminatus co-operative DLC.
Long story short, in December sometime all players get access to a new Capture the Flag gametype. Those who pay $10 for the DLC pack get a Chaos version of the Exterminatus horde-mode game, as well as 3 new maps that work for all gametypes. Also, four new multiplayer skins will be available for $3 each. Finally, 10 new achievements will be added, almost certainly all tied into the new game modes.
Capture the Flag sounds like crazy fun, since Space Marine moves so fast and the maps tend to be on the small side IMO. I haven’t played Exterminatus, so I don’t really know what to think of a Chaos version coming out. I’ve played a ton of multiplayer, though, and having the map count go up from five to eight is… well, almost worth $10 to me. I won’t be buying the skins, awesome as the Legion of the Damned one looks, as the game moves too fast for anyone to notice much about what you look like. Besides, I wear camouflage.
Guest Chat: Getting Excited About Video Games
Sig Fem Seks: Oh man
Sig Fem Seks: I’m getting excited about video games
Sig Fem Seks: Uncharted 3 and Skyrim are so close
Sonic Rob: it is true
Sonic Rob: I just started playing Catherine, so I have high hopes for that
Sig Fem Seks: I almost started Brotherhood yesterday
Sonic Rob: =(
Sig Fem Seks: but I realized that I won’t be able to finish it by the time Uncharted comes out
Sonic Rob: yeah
Sonic Rob: see, this is why being a player of new games sucks
Sonic Rob: you are beholden to release schedules
Sig Fem Seks: I’ve come to a realization that if I start a game and I don’t finish it before I start another game, I will never finish it
Sonic Rob: so don’t start the other game
Sonic Rob: I am sure there will be copies of Uncharted to buy once you are done with Brotherhood
Sig Fem Seks: No but that’s the problem
Sig Fem Seks: I have to play Uncharted ASAP
Sonic Rob: why?
Sig Fem Seks: to avoid spoilers and because I’ve been waiting for so long
Sonic Rob: hm
Sonic Rob: you know
Sonic Rob: I don’t think I wait for games
Sonic Rob: the statement “I’ve been waiting so long for this game that I must play it ASAP” has no resonance with me
Sig Fem Seks: Brotherhood is something I look forward to starting when I have nothing else to play
Sig Fem Seks: because I know it’ll be good
Sonic Rob: wait wait
Sonic Rob: you have to play Uncharted now
Sonic Rob: because you don’t know if it’ll be good?
Sig Fem Seks: Uncharted is on a different level than Brotherhood
Sig Fem Seks: I know it will be amazing
Sig Fem Seks: I know Brotherhood will be good
Sonic Rob: ok, I think I get it
Sonic Rob: you don’t want to be tied up in a good game that keeps you from starting a transcendent game
Sig Fem Seks: It’s like Christmas presents
Sig Fem Seks: My mom got me a baseball bat, BUT HOLY SHIT LOOK AT THAT BIKE OVER THERE
Continue reading Guest Chat: Getting Excited About Video Games
Sonic Rob’s Jump Troop Tactica for Space Marine Multiplayer: Part III
Finishing out my series of posts on how I like to go about playing a jump marine in Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine, let’s discuss my two least favorite maps and briefly touch on the use of Perks.
Basilica
• My absolute least favorite map to play as ASM. There are a lot of covered passages that are can’t be jumped through, as well as long narrow hallways with tall ceilings that basically are setting ASM up to get clay pigeoned by a dev at the other end.
Continue reading Sonic Rob’s Jump Troop Tactica for Space Marine Multiplayer: Part III
Sonic Rob’s Jump Troop Tactica for Space Marine Multiplayer: Part II
Last time I held forth with no real qualifications or justification on how to fight as a jump marine in Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine. Carrying on with the second of three posts on the topic, I’d like to discuss particular maps in the game and how to best use the jump marine’s particular traits in each of them.
Continue reading Sonic Rob’s Jump Troop Tactica for Space Marine Multiplayer: Part II
Sonic Rob’s Jump Troop Tactica for Space Marine Multiplayer: Part I
I’ve been enjoying the hell out of Space Marine’s multiplayer mode, probably more than I’ve enjoyed an online game in some time. It’s pretty thin on maps and classes, but in a way that allows for some very fine tuning. It’s like a really well-cooked steak with nothing on it and no side dishes.
I’ve been looking online for some guides to playing the game, but it’s starting to look like the multiplayer community may be deserted in favor of the big games coming out in the next few weeks. Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3 are both waiting in the wings to snap up fans of high-caliber online violence, and Batman: Arkham City just ate all of the nerd gamers. Still, they say that if you can’t find what you need, build it, so here are some thought on playing the easiest class in the game and thus the one I feel most confident in holding forth regarding: the Assault Marine/Chaos Raptor (ASM).
Continue reading Sonic Rob’s Jump Troop Tactica for Space Marine Multiplayer: Part I
Good Morning
Hi everyone. I’m really sorry about the pace of posting things lately – I went from a reasonably cushy government contracting job to unemployment and now to a new job in the video gaming industry. I’m really pleased to be here and it’s a great opportunity, but the pace is just blistering my ass; I’m laying down 60+ hours a week with a really long commute on top of it. In some ways, I suppose I’m living a much more ordinary and less charmed working life than I was at the start of the year. I’m certainly beginning to see the appeal of handheld gaming in a way that wasn’t as obvious when my commute was a ten-minute drive.
I’m going to continue writing posts as I’m able, but the length and tone of them may have to change to suit the amount of time I can give to the site. Hopefully we can still have a lot of fun blathering about games and such.
-ssr
Schmannonball Schmead: Legion by Dan Abnett
Dan Abnett is arguably the best author working in the Black Library’s Warhammer 40,000 setting. He has a wonderful ear for dialogue and his characters tend to be well-drawn and to have understandable motivations, even if he introduces them only to kill them off a few sentences later. This is actually one of his favorite tricks, and it means that his novels, set in the splinter of the 40K setting known as the “Daniverse” are among the more colorful and well-populated.
Abnett also understands a key problem with 40K, which is that it’s actually sort of a shitty setting. Space Marines are dull, Imperial Guardsmen are idiots, and even Orks can get monotonous after a while. Sure, in the grim darkness of the far future there is only war, but you have to write about more than war or risk your novel turning into a Risk War Diary. Abnett’s solutions, at least in the novels I’ve read, are to avoid writing about Marines whenever possible, and to populate his stories with more-or-less normal humans who exist in cultures distinct from the usual kinda-like-Nazis-kinda-like-Victorians Imperium of Man. Legion, the 7th novel in the very long-running Horus Heresy series, set in the 30th Millennium, long before the “present” of the 40K universe. The novel purports to tell the tale of the Alpha Legion, youngest of the Space Marine Legions and one that we know in 40K as a dreaded Traitor Legion. In fact, like a lot of the Heresy novels Legion takes place mostly from the perspective of a series of bystanders, normal humans serving alongside the Alpha Legion in the vast non-Marine human armies.
John Grammaticus, an immortal psychic, works for a Cabal of aliens who have seen the future. They would like to meet Alpharius, leader and genetic template for the Alpha Legion, so they can warn him about a coming danger to the galaxy that the Legion might be able to help avert. The aliens don’t trust the humans, who are a young and violent species, and the humans don’t trust the aliens because various aliens have perpetrated mass slaughter against humans at times when the Imperium was weak. Wacky misunderstandings and hijinks ensue.
Continue reading Schmannonball Schmead: Legion by Dan Abnett