Here’s a spoiler-free video I made to poke a little fun at the whole Mass Effect 3 ending upset. You probably have to have some familiarity with Mass Effect to have any idea what I’m talking about up there.
I’m actually not done with the game yet, so please no real spoilers.
Tiny Tower isn’t a game you guys. IT ISN’T EVEN A GAME. Oh my god, what am I doing with my life?!
Developed by NimbleBit (those guys what brought you Pocket Frogs), Tiny Tower is an iOS “game” where–look, I’ll just let NimbleBit tell you:
“Tiny Tower lets you build a tiny tower and manage the businesses and bitizens that inhabit it!”
NEATO! I don’t know what a bitizen is, but that sounds pretty cool, I guess. Fun, yeah? Fun. And look, it’s got this sweet pixelated art-style that’s bound to seduce every old-school gamer reading this right here. I’m sure this might even be attractive to some of you young hipster gamers who weren’t even alive when pixels were a thing we had to deal with. “Hey, remember Pixels?! We do too! Remember Sim Tower? Sorta? Just a little bit? Yeah, us too. Well, take everything you loved/sorta-remember about Sim Tower and put it on your phone!”
Now take everything out of it that makes it a game! Continue reading
Gears of War 3 is the first real ending to a videogame trilogy that I’ve ever seen. So many videogame series call themselves trilogies, but when it comes time to actually say goodbye, most refuse to go. They start to pack up their things, begin to tie up their storylines, but then they smile and nod at you and whisper, “Wait, I can still suck more money out of you! Let’s not tie up everything, okay?” Gears doesn’t do this, either with its story or its gameplay. This is the end of the Gears of War trilogy, and it feels like an ending, and that is the highest praise that I can bestow on it.
The gameplay is tighter than it’s ever been. I played through the game solo, on hardcore difficulty, and it never felt unfair. Every time I died, I earned that death, by doing something really really stupid. Gears of War has always forged a constant push and pull between taking cover and running directly into battle, and sometimes taking cover for too long will let a Locust get the drop on you, and sometimes running into battle will get you blown to bits before you can chainsaw your foe in the face. Gears 3 does a better job than any shooter before it of making you feel responsible for your death, not by punishing you, but by never cheating you. In Gears 3, you earn your success, and you earn your failure, every time. Continue reading
Posted in xbox 360
Tagged Cover-based, Gears of War 3, Narrative, review, Shooter, Story, Third-person
I got the Gears of War 3 Epic Edition a few days earlier (thanks SA Studios, Microsoft, and Epic Games!), so I made this little unboxing video so you all could see all the weird stuff in this big box.
Adam attends the Call of Duty XP 2011 event in LA, but returns home from war a different person.
Posted in ps3, video, xbox 360
Tagged Apocalypse Now, Call of Duty, Call of Duty XP, Modern Warfare 3, Parody
Here’s a video I edited and did the special effects on. It features a series of scantily-clad women trying (and failing) to answer pretty simple videogame trivia questions. It was produced for Bitmob and Machinima.
Posted in video
Adam attended the Ubisoft Press Conference at E3 2011 and has survived to make jokes about it. Here are the highlights of the show.
Tagged Assassin's Creed, Driver 3, E3, Far Cry 3, Ghost Recon, Just Dance, Press Conference, Raving Rabbids, Rayman, Ubisoft, Video
Adam gives a quick rundown of the biggest news out of the Microsoft Press Conference.
Posted in xbox 360
Tagged E3, Forza 4, Gears of War 3, Kudo, Mass Effect 3, Microsoft, Press Conference, tomb raider
Today the Steam sale was The Sims 3 focused. I’ve wanted to pick up The Sims 3 for a while now, but I was never going to pay $50 for a game that I’ve already played over and over again for the past ten years. At $20, though, it was suddenly reasonable. The problem is that for whatever reason, EA doesn’t sell The Sims 3 for Mac on Steam. So only the PC version was on sale, which is ridiculous, because when you buy the game in a physical store, they give you a DVD that works on both PC and Mac.
After a quick internet search, I saw that both the EA Store and Direct-2-Drive also had The Sims 3 on sale for $20, and they were offering the Mac version for the same price. Score, right? No. I spent my whole lunch break trying and failing to buy it on Direct-2-Drive. They wanted me to make an account, enter in all of my billing information, and then they had to call me to verify. Only the phone call verification would never work. After three tries with my credit card and three tries with my PayPal, they blocked my account from trying to purchase the game (what?), and I turned to customer support.
To use Direct-2-Drive, you have to make an account. To use their customer support, you have to make a different, separate, customer service account. What? I’m having a problem with your service, and you make me fill out more forms, just to gain the ability to fill out more forms? So for a good half hour I said no to that, until eventually I said okay, fine to that. I opened a customer service account and filed a case with them. By the end of the day (end of the day?!) they e-mailed me saying they had lifted the block. I went back in, had to start from scratch with an empty shopping cart, but I bought the game and it worked.
So now I’m playing the game, right? No. Now I’m downloading a huge file, then I’m going to have to enter a serial number they sent me, then I’m going to have to do some kind of activation with EA. I could have avoided all of these problems by just downloading the game illegally, which begs the question, why is EA punishing the people who want to purchase their games? And why is Direct-2-Drive so improperly named, as nothing is going directly to anything, you guys.
And all of these problems would be avoided if the game was on Steam for Mac, because you guys, Steam just works. But Steam can’t work if you don’t put your game on Steam. Why would EA put The Sims 3 for Mac on disc, on Direct-2-Drive, and on their online store, but not on Steam? It boggles the mind.
So, game companies. Hi. I have a favor to ask you: put your games on Steam. I know you’re afraid of Steam, you can see that it’s a monopoly train barreling towards your bottom line, taking control of all sales in this industry. But you guys, at least their train runs like it’s supposed to. And I know you’re trying to get your own online stores going, but until your online stores have integrated friend lists, automatic updates, and unlimited downloads to unlimited computers, STOP TRYING TO HAVE AN ONLINE STORE AND JUST PUT YOUR GAMES ON STEAM. Because yes, Steam can be better, but Steam is better than everything else.
Sincerely,
–Adam.
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Adam Dorsey
Curtis Retherford