Diamond Mind Baseball is a text-based baseball sim. I’m going to explain why I like it so much, but I should state that I’ve been in a league with seven other guys for the past five years. I’ve played 84 games a year and the game hasn’t become stale yet.
Hey there, I’m famous. To put it in terms more palatable to the audience of this site, I’m as famous as Erik Wolpaw was when he wrote that he was as famous as John Stamos. And, to clarify, I’m as famous as Erik was then, not now, after he made two of the greatest things in the history of computer games: Portal 2 and Jonathan Mak confused.
No, I’m just kidding, I’m not famous, or even Internet-famous, not like this goddamn cat. I’ll tell you who is, though — that cat’s owner, and one of my favorite independent film makers: Jason Scott.
Full disclosure: I was in one of Jason’s movies. But it was about text adventures, and it’s not like there’s this huge potential cast list there. He wasn’t exactly going to be able to interview Bob Saget and an Olson Twin, for instance. Although I’m sure Bob would have figured out a way to make “Leather Goddesses of Phobos” dry heave. So please let me table the transparent conflict of interest for a moment: while my childish desire for attention would have had me agree to be in one of his movies if he were stirring up a batch of frottage-fueled shag porn, many of my colleagues would have declined if he wasn’t fair, dedicated, talented and meticulous. Oh, and if he didn’t make great movies.
And he does! Look, I love documentaries that are thinly-veiled, vicious character attacks. I can’t get enough when it comes to Bluray transparent smears. Everybody loves watching Billy Mitchell be made an asshole, even though it’s probably unfair, because everything in “The King of Kong” was as fake as “2001: A Space Odyssey” or the NASA moon landings, depending on how you roll. Everyone is going to love Michael Moore ripping whoever the next Republican president is, assuming the six Navy SEALs guarding him don’t slice him up like a tauntaun after what’s sure to be a mild and unassuming winter. But the tar-and-feather doc is the documentary equivalent of a popcorn flick.
But sometimes a well-researched movie pays off. I don’t have the vocabulary to describe the opposite of a popcorn flick. Looking at Rotten Tomatoes, there are movies with made-up words like “Colombiana,” which sounds like something even the Eragon cretin would have turned his nose at. But whatever those proper documentaries are called, Jason makes them, and he’s launched a Kickstarter to make three more. One on Arcades, one on the 6502 processor, and one on the medium of TAPE.
I think these are great ideas for films. I used to be an Assembly programmer for Cyrix, and together, we had some good times making you finish last in Quake. I’d put my arm around you if a processor from 1998 that lacked floating point math could “do” arms. With that in mind, programmers who worked in Assembly for systems that families actually enjoyed, like the 6502-based Apple II and Atari 800, are dying to tell their stories. The arcade documentary is about the spirit of the place, not necessarily arcade games themselves. I’m trying to purchase the cut footage of Robert Mruczek’s expansive vagina frescoes from the makers of “Chasing Ghosts,” but Jason’s replies back must have been accidentally flagged by gmail. I don’t know anything about magnetic tape, except that after the Nazis invented it in 1928, they’ve finally made enough of it to completely encircle your mom.
I’m confident that you’ll want to support these films as you learn more. Jason releases his movies via a Creative Commons license. They’re impossible to “steal.” An agreement he made with Thom Henderson let Thom host an episode of one of Jason’s previous movies, BBS: The Documentary, on-line. Click here and then click on the link that gives you the episode. I initially avoided watching the episode on PKZIP because I thought it would be the most boring story ever told, except for every episode of “Star Trek: Voyager.”
The PKZIP one is actually the best episode of the bunch. If you don’t think so, that’s cool, but if you dig it like I think you will, well, this film maker is going to create three more documentaries with proper funding. He doesn’t get anything through Kickstarter if the full amount isn’t pledged. At $33 grand each it might sound like a lot, but he’s just a guy, not HBO here. He needs to fly to find these people. There’s other stuff, as well: he funded an excursion to the actual cave that “Colossal Cave” was based on for GET LAMP. For all I know, for the TAPE documentary, he’s planning on going to the building where Watergate happened and where you liberal scum effectively stabbed America to death. I don’t think these expenses are that crazy for the product we’ll get. I put up $250 in the name of Caltrops Dot Com to support him, and I hope you will find it within you to pledge funds, too.
Ice Cream Jonsey
There’s no time for an opener! The Cable Brothers are going to tell you if The Legend of the Mystical Ninja is still worth playing in 2011.
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Today was my day off so I dedicated an unhealthy chunk of time to Space Marine.
Results!
7-8 Hours to beat single player on Normal.
1-2 hours to get to level 10 in multiplayer.
Totally stable the entire time, never got stuck, but a few odd glitches (you move into chaos marines when you execute them. happened 100% of the time.)
It’s OK I guess. If anything it made me more appreciative of DXHR and reminded me why I never played any of the Halos. Switching between melee and ranged feels really good, but the melee is still just right click right click right click F, right click right click right click F over and over for every weapon. You can only hold 4 weapons and your first 2 slots are always your pistol and bolter, but some of the guns just feel really really off (sniper and lascannon especially) so I just stuck with the melta shotgun and grenade launcher. The combat feels best when you’re fighting orks since the Chaos troops all tend to hide behind cover and chip at your health while a few demons attack in melee. The highlight is probably when you have a 3-way war between everyone and you just sprint into the middle with a thunder hammer. After that they start throwing bullshit shooter sections and force you to improvise cover while you have no way of healing since all the enemies are waaaaaaaay over there*. Wasn’t their whole schtick that they were breaking the Gears of War trend and making a big gun brawler hybrid? Did they scrap the plan halfway through? Is that why so much is ripped straight from the Gears of War template?
Everyone already knows the story. You’re fighting orks. Then the chaos comes. Then you fight the chaos while resisting the warp. It’s the same as every other 40K game. They try to spice it up by adding audio logs, but of all the games that have had this feature, this is probably the worst example. Part of that is probably because they’re usually a way to expand the universe and characters, but since the 40K universe is already firmly established the whole thing just falls flat. I thought giving the player history lessons on the horus heresy or how space marines are made would have been way more interesting but they were just trying to play it safe.
The whole thing is one long corridor, but it’s a pretty one, especially at the beginning. The end felt a little too purple/black and just wasn’t very impressive. The sewers came about 1/4 of the way though, I think. It was a very short section. Crates are everywhere but you can’t break them.
I was really hoping they would have some dreadnaughts/kanz, or to have a giant battle of 50 IG against 1000 orks, or some good bosses (there’s 1 “real” boss, the other 2 are you shooting down a ship and a 3 minute QTE). Like I said, they were playing it safe and really just stuck to the GoW example.
One thing I noticed is that when you’re doing the execution moves to get back health, enemies can still hurt/kill you. It does feel better than “OK time out while he kills our friend”, but it usually leaves you with the same amount of health or less if you got a long animation. You get an armor upgrade later in the game that helps a ton (all upgrades are automatic. You just find them in drop pods as the game goes on). The fury mode also gives you health, but if you use it when you’re at 50% and falling you’re pretty much dead.
Multiplayer is a hot mess. If you ever played Dead Space 2’s multi then you know exactly what to expect here. It’s not nearly as blatant and unfair to level 1 players, but the same problems are there. Everyone keeps trying to use the MW2 model without realizing that there’s a difference between earning a rifle that shoots slightly faster and more accurately and earning the demoman’s sticky launcher. Team balancing is non-existent as far as I can tell and there are only 2 modes and no last stand mode (I give it 5 months before they release it as DLC for $10). I’m also playing from Vietnam so my connection is horrible and I’ll still get shot well after I’ve turned a corner. It works both ways though so that’s not too much of a deal breaker. Plus the assault marine/raptor works fine even with terrible lag.
Overall I don’t regret my purchase and I had a pretty good time with it. Rocket jumping all over the place with a thunder hammer feels awesome. The game fails when it tries to play the battles and mechanics safely and succeeds when everything goes batshit insane. Plus it came with Darksiders so yay. I’ll probably have more fun with the Binding of Isaac though.
*It actually doesn’t happen that often but when it does you’ll hate it…
Lurker 56498
Editor’s note: The year is 2003. Web comic creator Roop Dirnup developed Melted Brain, a MMORPG-based strip that used, for the most part, actual posts by prospective MMORPG fans as comic dialogue. Thought lost in time, Caltrops will be posting a Melted Brain strip every Friday for the rest of the year. Click for the huge version.
Roop
Editor’s note: The year is 2003. Web comic creator Roop Dirnup developed Melted Brain, a MMORPG-based strip that used, for the most part, actual posts by prospective MMORPG fans as comic dialogue. Thought lost in time, Caltrops will be posting a Melted Brain strip every Friday for the rest of the year. Click for the huge version.
Roop
A lot of us are enjoying Deus Ex: Human Revolution on our IBM PC personal computers and 100% compatibles. The Cable Bruddas believe it to be a better game than the original Deus Ex (and I am going to assume Deus Ex 2 as well, although that is not specifically stated). Find out exactly why with this video review.
Mild to medium cut-scene-based spoilers in the video.
Problem? Join us on the forum.
Editor’s note: The year is 2003. Web comic creator Roop Dirnup developed Melted Brain, a MMORPG-based strip that used, for the most part, actual posts by prospective MMORPG fans as comic dialogue. Thought lost in time, Caltrops will be posting a Melted Brain strip every Friday for the rest of the year. Click for the huge version.
Roop
Editor’s note: The year is 2003. Web comic creator Roop Dirnup developed Melted Brain, a MMORPG-based strip that used, for the most part, actual posts by prospective MMORPG fans as comic dialogue. Thought lost in time, Caltrops will be posting a Melted Brain strip every Friday for the rest of the year. Click for the huge version.
Roop
I never bought River City Ransom for the Nintendo Entertainment System because I thought it took place in Venice, and I was raised xenophobe. Hung over and barfing, I am literally the perfect target audience for the Cable Brothers, who are answering the question “Does River City Ransom pass the test of time?”
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