The Nintendo NES Classic Edition mini console has gone on sale and it’s apparently the hot holiday item. It’s selling out quickly at every location as it becomes available. Despite the recommended retail price of $60, eBay speculators have driven the price up to $999 in some cases. That’s roughly $30 for each of the 30 games the hardware comes with. A steal!
Good luck NES Classic Edition hunters!
I was having dinner with some people a few years ago when a friend of mine, who is actually a well-known role-playing game designer, started making fun of euro games. “It’s just a bunch of abstract concepts wrapped up in gameplay mechanics,” he said, “except that the red cube represents Catholicism.” I bristled at that, because sure you can make a lot of very historical mechanics about Catholicism when you’re playing a role-playing game about being the pope, but how are you going to get enough people to represent all of Europe? Answer me that, smart guy. I went away thinking I was pretty smart, myself.
Turns out he was right. And not just about the Reformation. Continue reading →
If I was to make a game that I didn’t want anyone to actually play, it would look a lot like Clockwork Empires. A torturous interface with lots of busy little buttons and information spilled across various mutually exclusive screens. Basic tasks that require about two too many steps. Lots of waiting among the various stages of any process, so when you went off to do something else, you might forget the first thing you were doing. One way doors into unrecoverable economic death spirals that you don’t know you’re in until it’s far too late.
Also, it would crash a lot.
After the jump, steamedpunk Continue reading →
Chin up, Americans! While it turns out The Political Machine 2016 polling was correct, there’s still hope in the world. Some of you may think you’re facing a dystopian nightmare out of Fallout 4, but here are a couple of tidbits that show decency isn’t dead.
Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney donated $15 million to conserve 7,000 acres of North Carolina land. The easement permanently protects the Box Creek Wilderness area in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains from development for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. It is part of Tim Sweeney’s ongoing effort to safeguard parts of the 40,000 acres in North Carolina he started purchasing in 2008.
In international good news, the development studios for World of Tanks, Verdun 1914, 1979 Revolution, and Democracy 3 are donating some of this month’s sales to War Child, a charity for children in conflict regions like Afghanistan and Central Africa. Each of the studios will be offering special themed charity DLC or will hold sales for their games in support of the charity during the War Child Armistice Fundraiser.
Or, continue to run the tally in The Political Machine 2016 and shake your head.
When Tony Carnevale and Brian Haskell tried their respective hands at the same Brogue dungeon, they each met disastrous fates. What happened?
After the jump, post perma-death sight is 20/20 Continue reading →
Previously, in the Brogue game diary…Brian’s monkey has burned to death, he’s found a ring of stealth, and he’s gone blind from drinking a darkness potion.
I head back down to depth 5, sticking close to the walls, until I find a shadowy alcove to hide in until my vision slowly recovers enough to venture onward. I find a potion that turns out to be Fire Immunity. I have not seen any fire on this level yet, though.
After the jump, say hello to my little ogre Continue reading →
XCOM 2 on PC is finally complete. Update 7 for Firaxis Games’ alien hunting strategy game adds Xbox controller support and some bug fixes. Plug and play compatibility for Xbox 360 and Xbox One controllers had been requested by fans that were disappointed by XCOM 2’s failure to only officially support the Valve’s Steam Controller at launch.
Additionally, for fans that have always wondered what navigating the bulkheads of the Avenger would be like, the latest PC update adds a hack for a developer camera mode. As the video of the first-person view shows, wandering the XCOM headquarters ship shows off some fascinating details like the size of playing cards, the trophies the commander keeps, and exactly what the troops pin to their bunk walls.
Stardock tracks data about how people play their election strategy game, Political Machine 2016. They call these post-game stats the “exit polls”. In terms of which candidates people have been playing, it doesn’t look good for Hillary Clinton.
And in case you haven’t been told enough times, if you live in the US, vote.
Not so long ago, the term for interracial marriage was miscegeny. Today the term for interracial marriage is marriage. An important step in that process was the Supreme Court in 1967 telling Virginia, “Okay, look, you can’t make laws to stop certain people from getting married.” It would take another 48 years for the Supreme Court to really follow through, but they got there eventually.
On one level, Loving is about our country recognizing that falling love and marrying is part of the human condition. But mostly, it’s about two people who love each other and decide to start a family. The man happens to be white and the woman happens to be black. But the social ramifications, the political issues, the march of the Civil Rights Movement, and all that stuff is relegated to the background. Not because it’s less important. But because that’s not the story writer/director Jeff Nichols wants to tell. A through-line in Nichols’ movies is simple characters bearing up under the crushing responsibility that comes with caring for a family. That’s what this is. For its power, intimacy, and optimism, Loving is his masterwork.
This is easily the performance of Joel Edgerton’s career. It will hopefully be the richly deserved breakout for Ruth Negga’s. The movie opens on her face. It lingers there. Her wide-eyed openness is nothing short of angelic. Her smile is beatific. How else could I have watched so much of that dreadful Preacher series? Their relationship is a fascinating conjunction of a woman before her time and a man out of place. She is the driving force when it comes to introducing their case to the legal system and presenting it to the newly media-fed public. He’s a white man born and raised in a black community, who has learned to keep his head down. Edgerton plays him with a whupped and laconic doggedness. They’ve found their time and place in each other’s arms, and that’s where Loving finds a fiercely quiet and gently powerful portrait of everything that’s right, wrong, and then ultimately right with our country.
Loving is currently in limited release. It will open in additional cities throughout the month.
My name is Tony, and I’m an information addict.
I always knew I had these tendencies. It’s why I declared Invisible, Inc. the best game of 2015. Times are tough for people like me. If you ask Bruce Geryk, wargaming expert, for a computer wargame recommendation, he’ll ask to get back to you later. There aren’t any good computer wargames, because computer wargames are in the business of concealing information. (The discussion of why they do this is for another time, but it’s either because of “immersion,” “giving the computer a fighting chance by making the rules not-human-readable,” or both.)
After the jump, I can quit any time Continue reading →
Turtle Rocks Studios has released an unfinished campaign level for the original Left 4 Dead. Dam It is a gigantic scenario that combines Dead Air and Blood Harvest, ending with a climax in a hydroelectric dam. Although some of the scripting is not enabled, the scenario is playable once it’s added to Left 4 Dead as a mod. Turtle Rock co-founder Chris Ashton announced the release on the Turtle Rock forums, and the download page includes some developer commentary providing insight into the design of the project.
Turtle Rock Studios recently stopped supporting Evolve, after completing the game’s transition to a free-to-play business model on PC.
It’s our fourteenth Marvel Comics movie! Who among us is still down with the superheroes? At the 1:09, for this week’s 3×3, we reclaim our names from the movie characters who have tried to usurp them.
Next week: The Handmaiden
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Tony Carnevale, who considers Brogue one of the best roguelkes, explains why the term “roguelike” is being abused terribly by Steam, game developers, and hosts of the Qt3 podcast who consider Spelunky a roguelike. (Apologies for the weird sync issues, which we’ll get sorted out before we record again.)
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The Necromancer is coming to Diablo III. Blizzard has announced the Rise of the Necromancer DLC pack for Diablo III: Reaper of Souls which is scheduled for launch in 2017. Fans of exploding corpses and black leather can rejoice once again. But wait! Doesn’t the Witch Doctor control zombies? Won’t there be an overlap in undead abilities? According to Blizzard, the Necromancer differs in some important ways beyond his metal album fashion sense.
Necromancers can expect darker, more controlled gameplay centered around the raw materials of life: blood and bone. Grounded in a philosophical, pragmatic approach to life and death, they’re more like a calculated conductor of the darkest arts. Deadly serious in their practice, they are the experts of curses and reanimation – and their pets obey their every command.
The price and a specific launch date have not been revealed yet. Players who wish to purchase the Rise of the Necromancer pack will need to own Diablo III: Reaper of Souls on PC, or Diablo III: Ultimate Evil Edition on Xbox One or PlayStation 4.
As if the return of the Necromancer weren’t enough for nostalgia buffs, Blizzard also announced that they will be recreating the first Diablo game in Diablo III as part of an upcoming free update. The Darkening of Tristram content will include graphics filters to make the game look more like the older title.
The first level presents little challenge. At this point, I’ve led enough doomed adventurers into the dungeon that I know there’s not much that can kill you here except inexperience and poor judgment. I’m taking a more cautious approach than usual, though. I’m deliberating over each choice, rather than barrelling through the early levels.
After the jump, the monkey business commences Continue reading →
