Every Single Article Written by N - All 1343
‘Nexuiz’ Review – Remembering Shooters Past
This article was provided by our comic artist: Cody! NOTE: This review has been updated dramatically since originally posted.
What? Two games in one review? WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU?
Before I jump into the review, I want to explain why I’m doing this, and why it seems odd that two very different games bare the same name. The initial game was created by two friends, Lee Vermeulen and Forest “LordHavoc” Hale; the game was based on Hale’s Darkplaces Engine, and was meant to be a multi-platform game, available to PC, Linux, and Mac users. In early 2005, the game would be released, free for download and play on the web, with nothing to be unlocked through any sort of micro-transaction system. The game continued to garner support and contributions from the community, releasing version 2.5 in October of 2009. In 2010, IllFonic announced that they would take up the flag to remake Nexuiz in CryEngine 3, and would be released on XBLA, PSN, and Steam, with help from Forest Hale. Lee Vermeulen would go on to work on Capsized.
KONY 2012 Is A Bunch Of Sensationalist Garbage
Joseph Kony is a terrible human being. A Ugandan war criminal and head of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), Kony has conscripted tens of thousands of children to fight in violent guerrilla wars in Africa’s dreadful mid-section while prostituting young girls and committing some of the most diabolical acts in modern times. A radical Christian who believes he’s doing God’s work, Kony is a man who cannot suffer enough for his crimes. The recent film Machine Gun Preacher, starring Gerard Butler of 300 fame, is based on the real story of Sam Childers, who fought Kony’s LRA in the southern Sudan. Now non-profit filmmaking entity Invisible Children has made it their goal, through a viral short film that is spreading quick across the internet, to bring celebrity to Kony through broad awareness in the hope that through their efforts, we can finally capture the elusive terrorist and bring him to justice. But is their solution valid, or are they simply wasting your time and money?
Should X-COM Fans Be Mad?
I suppose it was inevitable: whoever wound up with the X-COM property and the desire to do something with it would ultimately fall under the pendulous blade of the long-time fans, like me. It’s not that I don’t have faith in 2K Marin and Firaxis, the dual studios in charge of the series’ reboot, but it comes off as a cruel joke when the developers explain that they are ‘long-time super huge mega fans’ of the franchise and they proceed to show you something that isn’t like what you were a long-time super huge mega fan of in the first place. With 2K upping the ante on the released media for these two titles – XCOM and XCOM: Enemy Unknown – it’s easy to see how the X-COM fanboy’s ire might be inspired (they even cut the hyphen out of the title in a JJ Abrams-reboots-Star Trek-fashion!), but should we be so quick to judge and trample these games? Is 2K jabbing a wasp’s nest by trying to re-invent X-COM nearly twenty years after it changed the world?
LulzSec In Jail, So Now What?
Today, the FBI announced that they had found and arrested the hackers behind LulzSec, a group that had spent the latter half of 2011 shutting down large web sites and causing what may end up being billions of dollars in damages on a whim. The arrests took place as early as last June when the Bureau brought in Hector “Duck Face” Monsegur (above) to serve as a double agent and track down the others in the group. As Sabu, leader of LulzSec, Hector now faces up to 124 years in prison for his crimes, all committed for the lulz. But with this massive operation now out of the way and some of the most vile hackers known on the internet now in custody, where does that leave us?
Ten Minutes Of Disney’s ‘John Carter’ Make Me Want To See It Even Less
Before the lashing begins: I love Andrew Stanton, the director of this long in utero film. John Carter is a legendary property that’s passed through multiple directors over the decades. Stanton, for those not in the know, is the Pixar wizard who brought us Finding Nemo and Wall-E. Fellow alum Brad Bird graduated to live action filmmaking recently and ended up with Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, which was a great action flick, so how does Stanton do with John Carter, due out this Friday? Well, not good, if this “promo” video is any indication (included after the break!).
Valve Making A Gaming Console Is The Stupidest Idea Ever
This morning, Joshua Topolsky screamed across the internet his site’s latest exclusive: apparently Valve is producing (well, co-producing) a console based on the online gaming service we all love. There’s a lot of excitement around the platform’s rumored GDC unveil, which is mere days away now, but while the internet was collectively hooting and hollaring, I was shaking my head in frustration. A Steam Box is a terrible idea that I hate it to death.
‘SSX’ Review – A Tricky Refresh
I never played the SSX games. Well, I should say that I played a little of each demo and decided they just weren’t for me. The series’ arcade-y controls and presentation just couldn’t hook me. As an Xbox guy, what really turned me onto snowboarding games, when I’d never played them before, was Amped’s open mountains and more accurately modeled controls. While SSX sold bajillions of copies, Microsoft’s series did not, leading developer Indie Built to tone down the hardcore approach a bit for the overly-comical Amped 3, a launch title for the Xbox 360. Well, that was six years ago and the snowboarding genre has been bone dry since, so how does EA’s SSX fare all those years later for an Amped fan?
Really well, actually.
I Have Had A Jack in the Box Bacon-Flavored Milkshake
Let’s be fair, milkshake design hasn’t changed in half a century. Sure, they added more cookies and chocolate and candy and other crap, but the fundamental shake has really only become greasier since the days when our parents weren’t born yet. Why should it, really? Does it need to? Well, Jack in the Box decided to add a flavor to the narrow spectrum of flavors in the pop shake continuum and they chose bacon.
Bacon.
Now I Remember Why I Don’t Buy PS3 Games
Yes, I admit I’m an Xbox guy. Despite showing up six years later to the console wars and winding up in a distant second place behind Sony’s PlayStation 2 console, they seemed to create a more elegant presentation with their hardware than Sony ever did. Tonight I went out to buy SSX and wound up with a copy on the PlayStation 3. Somehow I can handle Sony’s clunky interfaces and impersonal interactions, but I really am getting tired of dealing with the PlayStation 3.
‘Dear Esther’ Review – A Lonely Stroll Through Art
There was a watershed moment in the early 90s with the introduction of the CD-ROM to gaming. While consoles and floppy disk-based PCs were chugging along with hand-drawn art and MIDI-based music, CD-ROMs allowed for full-motion video (FMV) and fully orchestral scores that heightened the presentation dramatically. Back then, games like Myst or The 7th Guest brought you into crazy new worlds of incredible detail that only the shiny disc could allow. Pre-rendered movies allowed for an exponential leap in visuals because home PCs at the time weren’t even slightly capable of processing the visuals stored within in real-time. On the flip-side, the problem is that interactivity, especially early on, was limited, and video by nature is an inherently linear medium. These new ‘movie/art games’ had little deviation and as a result, had very little immersion.
Why do I bring this up? Because twenty years later, Dear Esther fulfills the promise of art in an interactive medium.
