AVP: disappointment vs. boredom
16296
I had great hopes when I heard that they were making a movie version of Alien vs. Predator, which began as a video game series and seemed sure to increase in greatness. Sadly, much like every other aspect of my life, Alien vs. Predator disappointed me.
736397
Tycho:  After seeing Chore Wars mentioned yesterday, the opportunities for manipulating people seemed...  rich.  The possibilities for mashups based on this data are also rich - I wonder if it could be exposed, somehow.  When my charge is old enough to manipulate in this way, my crib is going to fucking sparkle.
103810
Tycho:  We never sit down with the firm intention of making another Bioshock comic - indeed, we intend the opposite - but somehow Bioshock comics continue to be written.  One day, science will pierce these mysteries.  Until then, you'll simply have to endure more strips regarding interactive storytelling's electronic opus.  My recovery from this weekend's rigors would be quite accelerated if I were not up until two or more every night, which is to say morning, hacking and slashing my way through the new releases like some malarial jungle guide.  I put Bioshock to bed last night, and theoretically this should be cause for joy, but I suppose it's like finishing a pie.  There is a whiff of accomplishment, semisweet - but the pie is gone.  Without pause, I slapped the input stud on the video switcher before the final cinema faded to black.  Hurling the gamepad into a knitting basket, I dug deep into the faultlines of the couch, producing a wiimote/nunchuk pair.  I've now played enough of Metroid Prime 3 to know that they've washed the filth of Red Steel completely from the system.  For awhile, I was doing that thing we sometimes do, playing until "the next savepoint," which so frequently becomes "until the savepoint after that," only to meld seamlessly into "until I can no longer see."  They've been spinning the tumbler at Retro for awhile on this one, trying to define first person on Nintendo's weird little chimera, and they've drilled down with enough diligence to find it.  No doubt some measure of the enthusiasm directed toward the game is due to the fact that people are actually using their Wii again, but that shouldn't diminish what they've done.    People have seen Corruption for a couple years, now, builds that bubbled up at different press events, and it's been slightly different each time.  I think they've moved some of the interactions since I last played it - things that were mapped to the nunchuck's gyro before are now handled by the wiimote's pointing device, and I understand why.  Gestures are a very immersive, intuitive means of interaction, but when they fail (or when they fail to express us correctly) they are Goddamned infuriating.  In a case when your hand is actually "present" in the simulation - such as when your left hand is pulling, then twisting, then pushing forward - those motions need to be as authentic as possible.  They must have chosen the perfect translation of the pointing device over the more "correct" left hand interaction.  It creates situations where you are using a different hand than your character, but because the motion is really one to one it still feels pretty good.    That's the long way of saying what you could learn in five minutes, sitting in front of it.  This entire exercise has only stoked my ardor.  It is my intention to begin playing this game at ten, and continue doing so until light begins to creep under the curtains.
383958
The Lab judging panel will be busy this weekend picking a winner in the speak-to-the-Prime-Designer contest. (You can still enter today.) As they toil tirelessly, let us ponder this designerâs ethics, and whether it&#8217;s better to live in simulated joy or be really miserable. The posthuman Prime Designer may not care much what our puny [...].
607657
Vel has a drab musical score by Yuvan Shankar Raja, for whom consistency has never been a strong point. His outputs have always been a medley of the good and the mediocre. And now Vel joins the below average bandwagon.
236969
Most of the biggest, most highly anticipated video games of the year come out in the few months preceding Christmas. So why was I so bored?
250194
Chasing relative performance leads to a short-term orientation.
740360
Interview VR inventor on memes, and the blandness of digital culture
747108
Tycho:  We attended the same Nintendo Media Summit you have seen reported elsewhere, in the hopes of seeing Super Mario Galaxy or Metroid Prime 3: Corruption - titles which are not minigame compilations, portable puzzle games, or games for my mom.  I don't want to say that the complimentary breakfast and lunch were a factor.  Let me say that we were hungry when we made the decision to go.
405065
Google buys a mapquest of its own. Also: Sharp takes us to the future of television in 3-D & hellip;.  PayPal finds a way to make amends for mistakes & hellip;. and more.
193063
Are Internet users about to suffer from beta-testing burnout?
441052
In personal finance, boring is not  bad. Sometimes boring is good.
225897
Irregular hors d'ouevres, scheduling mishaps, and the stockbroker's eternal dilemma.
506329
[T]rane's diary entry and the later MLP discuss the life and death, primarily the latter, of Chris McKinstry, better known around these parts as mindpixel. His Mindpixel Project was an AI experiment; but in that I was never terribly interested. I was more interested in his theories on cognition and the brain as a hypersphere, optimised for surface area.
145484
Tycho:  Gabriel's ill-conceived Pong Pong challenge has brought out the wolves, and now the forest rings with their baying. Amaze Entertainment is holding tryouts internally to see who will leave our merry band in ruins. Upstarts from the DigiPen Institute of Technology will arrive soon to unseat the last generation as is the charge of all young men. "Suckerpunch" will cease to be a euphemism when one of their usually mild animators suddenly strikes my diaphragm.
669960
I guess I'm the bad boy of heart attack survivors. Mine played like low comedy from the start. It felt not like shearing pain; I had no revelations of mortality and sense of endtimes and lost opportunities. Actually, it seemed Bill Clinton was sitting on my chest playing the saxophone.
422917
Gabe: Well we had ourping pongmatch with Sucker Punch last Friday and I must say things did not go well for us. The Sucker Punch Rockets lived up to their studio's name and left us with a big old purple shiner. Already there is talk here in the office that our glorious victory march through the game industry is now looking more like a trail of tears.