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Entries from August 2008

If You Don’t Do One Thing Today at Work

August 25th, 2008 · 5 Comments

Don’t let it be this game.

Seriously, friends don’t let friends build Fantastic Contraptions.
I don’t know what’s cooler:  making a machine that works, or seeing how mind-blowingly awesome everyone else’s machines are.  For the level depicted, you could build a machine that looks more like a plow (that’s how I solved “Awash,” the level pictured here), [...]

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Tags: casual · design · webgames

Horrible Box Art: Glad it isn’t Just Us

August 23rd, 2008 · 3 Comments

Eventually every game team arrives at the day when it’s time to put your baby in a box.  Give that game a face and release it into the wild for the world to put their eyes on.  I’ve never been a fan of the term phrase “You can’t judge a book by its cover.”  I [...]

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Tags: uncategorized

Challenge vs. Frustration

August 19th, 2008 · 26 Comments

I was reading a great followup to GTA IV and how well they nailed their depiction of New York city over at Sexy Videogameland, when Leigh started wondering why it had been so long since she’d played GTA IV, much less thought about it.  Namely, she questions why she used to spend so much time [...]

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Tags: uncategorized

Nitpicking the Heavy Update

August 19th, 2008 · 2 Comments

Okay, it’s finally here, so what do folks think about it?  I for one am somewhat non-plussed about it, but then I don’t play the Heavy anyway (so feel free to dismiss).  But more to the point, reviewing their decisions from their own design requirements, I don’t really feel that they flexed any superior Valve [...]

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Tags: critique · design · nitpicking

Making a Batman

August 18th, 2008 · 3 Comments

While looking at the pictures of the new Eidos Batman game, Arkham Asylum, I kept thinking that Batman reminded me of someone.  I’m normally not a “screenshot” kinda guy; I know how much they get “bullshot” to make them look better, and I really want to see something in motion before doing any kind of [...]

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Tags: art · critique

A Little Bionic Commando Fanart: Haley

August 16th, 2008 · 1 Comment

I’m just past the halfway mark in BC: Rearmed, and I’m having a blast.  I can’t remember if Haley (the chopper pilot) was a character in the original game or not.  I remember the helicopter, but I don’t remember a character piloting it.  At any rate, I’ve fallen in love with the character.  The art [...]

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Tags: art

Serialized Bionic Commando Retro Code?

August 15th, 2008 · No Comments

I noticed that between the 360 at work, and mine here at home, that the unlock code you get when buying Rearmed for the “BC Retro Skin” for the full Bionic Commando 360 game is different on the two different machines.
The code at work is painfully simple, like, L, U, B, A, Y, Start.
The code [...]

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Tags: business · general

Super Bionic Commando: Rearmed

August 14th, 2008 · No Comments

Memories can be a funny thing.  Some are crystal clear.  Others, not so much.  Our favorite memories we tuck away in special corners of the mind, so that they are always there for us when we need them, and some find ways of recalling themselves from the depths of cold storage with uncanny fidelity.
And other [...]

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Tags: uncategorized

Spy’s Sappin’ Mah Ideahs

August 13th, 2008 · 1 Comment

I was right!  Tell your sister, I was riiiiiiight.
Valve released the first of the Heavy weapons update in their week-long burlesque strip-tease for the Heavy Update today, and it turns out it’s a set of boxing gloves that gives crits when you kill someone with them.

Huh, where did I see that design before……..oh yeah, that’s [...]

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Tags: art · combat · design

The Twenty Dollar Question

August 11th, 2008 · 7 Comments

Lately I’ve been playing on the cheap.  I find that I don’t have a lot of time to invest in longer “full” games, so I’ve been spending twenty bucks here, fifteen bucks there, and enjoying some of the “indie” fare gaming has to offer.
I go on these cheap spurts on a semi-regular basis.  Usually when [...]

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Tags: business