Civ5: It’s good to be the king

Diplomacy is not going as planned.

It’s been a while since I could do any straight up PC gaming, but I finally had a chance to pick up Sid Meier’s Civilization V (or five, for those of you who don’t speak Roman) this weekend.  As someone who has been playing Civ games since I was too young to really understand what was happening in them, Civilization 5 stays true to its original source material while adding new features, tweaking old ones, and generally screwing up history to the point of hilarity.

Red Dead Redemption: The Pinnacle of Storytelling?

The following deals with the themes and story found in Red Dead Redemption. It was spawned by a conversation that I had with Enosh in the comment section of his RDR review. I just recently finished the game and really feel like some of the things it explores in the narrative are worthy of examination. This article contains MAJOR spoilers for RDR. Do not read this if you intend to play the game or are in the process of doing so. If you have played the game or never plan to, I’d say start by reading Enosh’s review and the comments, then come back to this. I will admit this might be difficult to follow at points if your not familiar with the game at all, but I think the themes manage to show through. If you have any questions, leave a comment, I will respond! In case you can’t tell by the article, I would be eager to talk about any of this. Happy reading!

Mass Effect: a novel idea

So, I made a mistake. I’ll be the first to admit it.
I completely forgot to check out the second Mass Effect novel before I played the second game. I have a feeling it seriously hampered my ability to enjoy it.
Ascension is sort of an odd book. It doesn’t really pick up the main Mass Effect storyline where Revelation left off, but then again, that’s what the game was for. But it also doesn’t pick up where the first game left off.

XKCD: Abandon all hope ye who enter

I’m going to let you in on a little secret.

Well I’m not going to shout it across the room, come here. Little closer. Closer. Too close……closer. Ok, here it goes. I’m a nerd. There I said it. I posted it on the internet so you know it’s true.

Now that that’s off my chest I have some fabulous news for all of my fellow nerds. There is a comic wholeheartedly dedicated to our plight. XKCD is a physicist’s, mathematician’s, linguist’s, and a systems analyst’s comic all rick rolled into one. I will be the first to admit that I by no means get every reference in the comic, but reading through the archives with a Wikipedia tab close at hand is one of the single greatest pleasures I have had in the past year.

General Mish-Mash: Podcasting with poorly drawn Potatoes

General Mishmash is a REAL man's potato.

Stuff. You talk about it. Sometimes you wish other people talked about it too. Well, we are other people. Presenting the first Faceplant podcast, General Mish-Mash episode 1! We hit some of the hottest topics in the universe today, such as why hammocks are awesome. Seriously. But we also talk about how 3d games will be invading our lives and making them more….expensive? Speaking of expensive, Tophat freaks out and explains why Modern Warfare 2′s DLC is the devil and we’re all idiots. We also hit on some other big games such as Borderlands and Left 4 Dead 2, but really sink our teeth into what makes Mass Effect 2 great. And terrible. And also, kinda ehhh. With quick hits on game remakes, developers mailing it in, and many reasons why Enosh sucks, you can’t afford not to listen. Enjoy!  (The voice we referred to as “Peck” is actually “Tophat”.  Don’t ask.)

The stakes of remakes

What is it about remakes that we love so much?  Why can’t we just let something die?  It’s been an unexplained phenomenon for at least the past century, where it seems our culture wants nothing more than to take one of our beloved cultural icons and beat it with a stick, until it looks nothing like the original.

I always thought it went down like this:  somewhere there’s a large, open conference room stuffed full of old men in suits.  The old men have enormous white beards and eyebrows that look ready to rip a man’s face off.  They’re all wearing top hats and have monocles, and have been frantically discussing how to work the intercom without having someone walk outside to actually ask the secretary.  They are all over a hundred and fifteen years old.

Defeated, the men turn to their real job as presidents of entertainment, looking toward their, old gnarled CEO for guidance.  He clasps a cigar between his parchment thin lips and asks the question.