Context-Free Patent Art (via my buddy Jason)
Blogging
I’ve been playing Batman too much…
You know how after you’ve played a bunch of Bejeweled or Tetris right before bed, you see shapes and patterns and three-in-a-rows when you close your eyes?
Well, lately I’ve been closing my eyes before bed and going into Detective Mode.
Or I’ll see little green bats with circles around them.
This game is getting to me.
So close!
I almost made it. On day 24, my goal of posting something daily for the month of October came to an end. Of course, I have no idea what I was thinking doing this challenge in the middle of the busiest time of video game releases.
Recent changes in my life have limited my gaming time even more which obviously will limit my blogging time as well. I have a stack of games and a stack of ideas for posts, but things will slow down a little here. I still plan on finishing out the month strong and I’ll still be gaming as much as I can. It won’t be as much as in the past, but once a gamer, always a gamer.
As for what has my attention at the moment, it’s definitely Batman: Arkham City. This game is so dense. So much to do, it almost get’s claustrophobic. But at the same time, it’s SO GOOD. Seriously, this game has me gripped completely.
Just one nit so far (and maybe you Batman experts can help me out): How is Batman’s grappling line so long?
Zombies ate my arcade cabinet
(via GSW)
I hope you’ve already seen this:
It all makes sense
This is a like a video game version of The DaVinci Code. The more you read, the more it makes sense. And the sadder you’ll become.
Then read this and get really sad. (Note that there are multiple chapters):
The idea, here, is that The Sims Social is rife with sticky walls and mental fly-paper, trying to keep you staring at the world until you become so accustomed to its face it’s the same as being in love: you’re staring at your guy making nachos, or writing blog posts, because the game has attached this mammoth importance to making more money, to moving up in the world, to buying new furniture, and here it is giving you a fifty-percent bonus. You’re trapped, whether you’re actively “enjoying†yourself or not. You’re “doing it correctlyâ€, and the game is rewarding you, and it’s easier than pressing the right buttons with the right timing in Rock Band, and all it required was a little sleight-of-brain. You feel good about yourself. You look at this cartoon world long enough, and something of an Inverse Pavlov happens. Your brain begins to know that you are “enjoying†yourself, even if you hate this insipid thing. In spite of a love-shaped hole in the center of your spirit re: this electronic monster, you will not turn away.
The game is a Chinese finger trap of the mind: soon you realize that inspiration is free, which, in economics terms, means that the inflated value of single-energy-point actions when “inspired†is not a “bonus†or a “maximum†value — it’s the baseline; it’s the “minimumâ€. Once you grasp that your character can be made inspired with a little flick of the game’s mechanics, you’ll never want to do money-earning actions without being inspired — and if you do (and this is the important part!) you’ll feel lazy.
It’s SHOWTIME!
(Actually, it’s AMC, but who’s counting)
It’s Walking Dead time!
History of Handheld Systems
Some cool scans of Club Nintendo’s “History of Handheld Systems” over at The Bit Beacon.
My, we’ve come a long way
I came across this video a while ago, but watched it again last night and it really dawned on me how far along computer technology, computer graphics and special effects have come:
Could you imagine Blizzard having to program Diablo 3 like this? It would cost $15,000 a copy. (And you would buy it. YES YOU WOULD.)
New Kid on My Block
I haven’t done one of these in ages (almost 3 years, to be exact) because there is a proliferation of video game blogs now at a staggering rate and I just don’t find a ton of new interesting stuff to follow. Maybe I’m curmudgeon in my old ways, but it takes a lot to get me to add a new blog to the old feed reader.
Plus, with the advent of Tumblr, Twitter and other offerings, new, thoughtful video game blogging just isn’t happening very often now. I have my old standbys and I’ll stick with those.
So I don’t know how many more of these I’ll do.
That being said, an occasional stunner will pop up now and then and I want to do my part to highlight these as I come across them. I try to keep these relatively fresh, but remember that these sites are new to me but they are not necessarily new blogs.
This week’s New Kid on My Block is Electric Blue Skies:
(this is one you need to see full-size)
This scene is one that you certainly passed through if you played Halo: Reach. It’s a scene of beauty and vibrancy but something you didn’t have time to notice because you were too busy sniping grunts and running to the next check point. You never too the time to stop and smell the wildflowers.
Luckily the Emalord over at EBS is stopping (and cropping) all these beautiful vistas in numerous video games. I happen to be playing Halo: Reach at the moment and I’m really loving Chronicles of/Postcards from Reach. But the entire site is good. Take a look around and soak it all in.
I’m not saying these gorgeous screenshots are proof that games-are-art, but they are a pretty darn good starting-off point in the discussion.