Archive for March, 2012

I don’t normally care much about release dates — they get here when they get here — but Diablo III’s release on May 15 is too big to not care much about. It’s no October 16th, of course, but it’s still big.

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To announce the Mi-24 Hind add-on for Take On Helicopters, executive producer Lukas Milacek cites the following axiom about helicopters:

If it’s ugly, it’s British. If it’s weird, it’s French. And if it’s ugly and weird, it’s Russian.

How dare he! Just look at that regally hulking thing with its bulbous twin canopies and stubby death-laden wings. I suppose Milacek even thinks the A-10 is “ugly”. Harumph.

The new Hind DLC is $13, which seems a bit steep, but you can blame all those $60 scenery add-ons gobbled up by content-starved flight sim enthusiasts over the years.

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Soren Johnson (not literally pictured) is the ruthlessly calculating mastermind behind one of the most hideously effective time sinks since actual civilization: Civilization IV. You might think such a fellow is too high-brow and dignified for the likes of us. We’ll be the judge of that on this week’s episode of the Qt3 Games Podcast. Tune in for a recap of the best of this year’s GDC, a little Mass Effect 3 talk, a discussion of the latest Kickstarter projects, and a scientific test that determines whether Soren Johnson is, in fact, a nerd.

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In the Normandy’s engineering bay, crew member Cortez talks about the fate of his husband, killed in an attack by invading aliens. Cortez is a dude. With a husband. Shepherd doesn’t bat an eye as yet another “how’s your family?” dialogue unfolds. It’s clumsy, but only because it’s by Bioware. Not because it’s about a gay couple. Part of the beauty of Bioware is that they’re equal opportunity clumsy writers, regardless of sexual orientation.

There’s also a point on Citadel Station where a woman is talking about her asari lover — all asari are chicks — and the tension it causes with her family. I understand Shepard himself/herself can even get into gay relationships. This has been the case all along with the main characters in Dragon Ages, Mass Effects, and maybe even earlier (were there gay characters in the Old Republic games?). I don’t know this firsthand, not because I have any aversion to a particular lifestyle. Instead, my aversion is to ridiculous romance mechanics, gay, straight, or interspecies.

So does this matter?

After the jump, a long — but important — story Continue reading →

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There has been a lot of controversy regarding the community that plays fighting games recently regarding misogyny, with two high-profile incidents in the past week: a sexual harassment incident shown on webstream via a reality show used to promote Street Fighter X Tekken called Cross Assault, and another incident that led to a top player getting sanctioned and sponsorship pulled from a series of tournies out in NorCal. I’ve seen a wide variety of reactions to the scandals, everything from folks attempting to whitewash this away as inherent to the scene, to folks saying the whole community needs to be destroyed. I figured I’d write this to show why folks still care, as I recently got a chance to hit my first modern major tournament after many years of playing these games, which have been a big part of my life.

After the jump, my attempt to become famous ends up mad salty for my efforts Continue reading →

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Silent House is the latest remake of a foreign horror film, made for Americans who can’t be arsed to read subtitles. Naturally, we’re all “well, it wasn’t as good as the original Uruguayan film” blah blah blah. At the 33-minute mark, we discuss our favorite animal moments in movies.

Next week: 21 Jump Street

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The developers at Red Wasp Design have a great sense of atmosphere. Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land is so promising as it boots up, with a picture of Lovecraft in all his gangly ungainly glory. Something scratchy plays at a slightly wrong speed on a gramophone, half way between warbly singing and sinister chanting. This off-kilter spirit of Lovecraft carries into the mission intros, with the characters talking to each other in suitably “period” dialogue. They’re the band of investigators you’d find in any session of Chaosium’s tabletop RPG. Gung ho British soldiers are the cheerful muscle, infused with the can-do spirit of the not quite fallen British Empire. The brains of the party are a plucky psychologist and an occultist in a turban, each with a gun in one hand and a spell book in the other.

It’s World War I. A cult of eldritch god worshippers has insinuated itself among German soldiers. Undead and Leng spiders and eventually worse are shuffling and scuttling about the trenches and mustard gas and ruined cathedrals. It’s up to your ragtag band to get to the heart of the matter.

Then, after the jump, the gameplay happens Continue reading →

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I’m not very well versed in the Mario Party series, but based on my brief time with Mario Party 9, I can safely say it’s a great game for kids or drunk adults. If your household is host to either of those, consider this a minor wallet threat.

I feel the Silent Hill series has lost its way since the first game, but that doesn’t stop me from being curious about the latest, Silent Hill: Downpour. Still, is it a wise idea to name your game after a heavy rain?

Journey, the next game from the creators of Flower, is out this week. It has some sort of online functionality so that I don’t intend to play it until it’s out and you guys are playing it as well. But if the words “from the creators of Flower” aren’t a wallet threat, I don’t know what is. Finally Yakuza: Dead Souls brings to the clunky Japanese crimelord series exactly what it needs. Zombies.

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I’m sitting on a bench outside my local MMA gym. My brother just knocked me out in sparring then drove off and now I need my mom to come pick me up. I’m pretty sure all I need now is Michelle DeStefanis – my eighth grade crush – to show up and declare that I’m a loser and I’ll have a new lifetime low.

After twenty minutes, my mom rolls up in her minivan and honks the horn at me, drawing even more attention. I can’t wait until I’m a parent, so I too can have the ability to make an awkward situation even more embarrassing for my child. I don’t turn around to check, but I’m sure the entire gym is now watching as I get in.

After the jump, why I (sorta) deserved to get beat up Continue reading →

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I really like the Mass Effect 3 multiplayer, but you have to play with four players. Trust me. This is a lesson I learned the hard way.

Last Tuesday I stopped by Best Buy to pick up two copies of the game, one for me and another for my friend Chris. I walked in when the doors opened and asked the guy if they had a collector’s edition. He laughed in my face and told me I should have pre-ordered. I replied with “I had no idea this was Gamestop.” I hate that guy.

After the jump, saving the galaxy can get pricey. Continue reading →

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Why do we always come here
I guess we’ll never know
It’s like a kind of torture
To have to watch the show

Let’s see…adorable Muppets? Check. A mess of costumes and decorations? Check. Some new playable levels? Check. “Attract-O-Gel” that gives my sackboy the power to walk on the ceiling? Check. Cloning Hat? Pictured. All that should combine to make some most sensational, inspirational, celebrational, Muppetational DLC.

Then why do I find myself siding with those crotchety old blowhards in the balcony?

After the jump, not time to get things started Continue reading →

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I have a few things I’d like to say to some of the people playing Mass Effect 3’s cool co-op multiplayer mode. Some very specific things to some very specific people.

After the jump, that could mean you Continue reading →

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Updates the rest of this week will be spottier than usual since I’m away at the Game Developers Conference, which I always find relaxing, informative, and oddly re-energizing. If you’re at GDC this year instead of playing Mass Effect 3, come see the panel I’m moderating at the very end of the conference. The topic is that free-to-play games suck. Actually, that’s not technically the topic, but I’ll see what I can do.

And while I’ve got your attention, thanks for supporting the site by visiting us. We’ve been growing nicely even though I’m awful at promoting things. So if you’ll indulge me for a moment, I could use your help. We have a new Twitter feed ripe for the following at @Qt3, a Facebook page here that I’d be much obliged if you’d “like”, and podcasts that could use your ratings on iTunes (games podcast here and movie podcast here). We’ve also had a donation button up for a while that I’ve been pretty shy about pimping, but I’m grateful to the few folks who have used it.

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As an erstwhile wargamer — Wait, don’t go! We’re going to talk about real time strategy games, I promise. As an erstwhile wargamer, I love statistics about armor thickness vs penetration values, visibility profiles, morale ratings, operational range, and so forth. One of my first computer games was a turgid turn-based affair called Mech Brigade, released at the height of the Cold War and detailing all those terrible toys that would come into play in any Red Dawn scenario I might personally experience. When the Soviets came to Little Rock, Arkansas, I would know a Hind from a Havoc, a BRDM from a BMP, a Spandrel from a Sagger. And don’t get me started on Harpoon, which was my first real-time spreadsheet game. Fortunately, Arkansas is landlocked, so all that stuff in Harpoon was strictly hypothetical.

You might not be able to relate. So let me try this angle: when people talk about the sports, they use a lot of statistics, such as how many RBIs Manning Payton scored, a basketballer’s average speed per inning, and Pete Holmes’ stamina rating. In fact, I have it on good authority that entire sports games consist of nothing but statistics, much like how Paradox makes entire history games. And that’s where the unfortunately named Wargame: European Escalation will eventually get its hooks into you: as an almost grotesquely detailed catalog of Cold War hardware.

After the jump, gotta catch em all! Continue reading →

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Two years ago, I wrote up Mass Effect 2 as a list of ten things gone terribly wrong. I dismissed it as “a confused attempt to streamline an RPG, flesh out a shooter, cram a story between space dungeons, and pick up the loose ends from the first game”. But then you people bought it in droves, said adoring things about it, and put it on your various Best Game Ever lists. Nice move. Now we’re all going to get more of the same in Mass Effect 3.

Or — after the jump — are we? Continue reading →

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