When I was in elementary school two of my best friends, Jeff and Nick, lived within easy biking distance, just three houses away from each other. Nick was a latchkey kid and had the run of his house for a few hours each day after school. Obviously, that was where we always went to hang out. During the summer break, this translated into even more unsupervised time which naturally made his house the home base for all our youthful shenanigans. We built elaborate water parks in his backyard, watched movies were weren’t supposed to, and fought a secret war in the neighboring woods against a pack of rival kids from a nearby cul-de-sac. It was an ideal, free-range childhood.
We also played a lot of video games, mostly the NES titles all nine-year-olds were into at the time: Mario, Metroid, Contra, Mega Man. We played crappier games, too, like Battle Toads or Silver Surfer, games that had us beating our heads against a wall each time the difficulty spiked and passing the controller around until we prevailed. Our tastes were simple and we usually just played whatever had the coolest box art at the local rental shop.
But then we met Chad.
After the jump, my introduction to true nerditry. Continue reading →
One of the minor things that bothers me about Inception is that it’s so high concept that it doesn’t afford much room for characters. So you get tremendously talented actors like Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tom Hardy, and Ellen Page, but you come away from the movie with no inkling how talented they are.
After the jump, Super to the rescue Continue reading →
One of the modern FPS mechanics Section 8: Prejudice uses is unlocks through advancement. Don’t get too worked up about it though, since all of the weapons and almost all of the equipment and armor mods are available at level one. You start out with the basic tools to get the job done but as you advance up you get more tools in the toolbox to specialize, surprise, and more closely match your style of play.
After the jump, unlock-o-rama by the numbers Continue reading →
World of Tanks is a hard game to categorize. It’s certainly not an FPS, since the vehicles that are your “character” evolve over the course of thousands of battles in a process that owes much to RPG’s. On the other hand, it’s not really an MMORPG, since there are never more than 29 other players on the battlefield with you. I suppose “FPS/MMORPG hybrid” is the best way to describe it, aside from the horrendous acronym that results. Whatever label you prefer, the fact is that balance is crucial in such a game. With no PvE content and a player base that’s paying close attention, World of Tanks needs to get the balance right. As of today, I’d say they’re doing a mediocre job at best.
After the jump: matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match Continue reading →
The Ice Palace is easily my favorite dungeon. Flocks of man-eating penguins line the walls. When Link enters a room, they run and toboggan toward him, their beaks yawning. At the same time, ice spirits come flailing out of the other walls like stunt men afire. The iced-over floors makes dodging a slippery giddy panic, and at times it looks a little like an episode of Benny Hill.
I’ve been playing long enough that all my instincts for solving Zelda puzzles have reactivated. Show me a configuration of blocks on the floor, a statue, two switches, and four torches, and the whole solution flashes in my mind like the crime footage in CSI. I pass effortlessly through locked doors, and descend to the depths of the Ice Palace where I pincushion the boss — a trio of floating eyes named Kholdstare — with arrows.
After the jump, I can’t stop now. Continue reading →
