I first saw George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead when I was around nine or ten years old. That year I absolutely wanted to be a zombie for Halloween. I made it about as far as some green face paint, a little fake blood, and a pair of my jeans with torn out knees. Still, I spent that 31st of October shambling around with my arms extended, hands hanging from limp wrists, groaning “Braaaaains” in my squeaky pre-pubescent voice. My love of zombies has only grown over the years, as has the popularity of zombie culture. There are at least 24 zombie movies by Romero himself, The Walking Dead comic book and subsequent TV show, and of course countless games. Some of these games are passable, but the vast majority are not. The mobile industry in particular seems to love a good zombie game, and a bad zombie game even more. As such, it was with some mild trepidation that I downloaded Undead Nation: Last Shelter for my Pixel. I originally discovered the game through an ad … [Read more...] about Undead Nation: Last Shelter Review
Lets recycle sorting game
WoW Xmas Wishlist
Warlords of Faff The one thing I have to give this expansion credit for is that they really have embraced the gospel of faff. There are more widgets and thing-a-ma-bobs for me to fiddle with in this expansion than any in any mmo to date. It seems like I can lose entire mornings with all of the little goals that I seem to have. Garrisons are a big portion of this, requiring just enough effort to make it worth doing… but requiring just enough time to eat up large blocks of your time. They are this glorious black hole for people who are like me and are huge fans of short term goals. On the other side of the equation there are folks who absolutely hate them, because they represent an end to the way certain portions of this game worked. For the folks that loved farming resources and then using those resources to play the auction house… unfortunately that time is over. To a lesser extent you can do this with savage blood because on … [Read more...] about WoW Xmas Wishlist
Mirrorball
Last night I spent a not insignificant amount of time playing Destiny 2 Warmind. You will have to excuse the garbage screenshots but I was largely chilling on the sofa with my laptop and it runs the game at the potato resolution of 1366 x 768. I say potato because scaling down to that from the 4K display I have upstairs is quite the adjustment. It however allows me to be flexible where I am gaming, and last night allowed me to hang out with the mrs while still getting to do the thing I wanted to do. I’ve had a bit of a falling out with Destiny 2 over the last few months and I am not entirely certain why. It is just like after the release of Curse of Osiris I lost my forward momentum and stopped caring that I was no longer getting those engrams every day. Based on the fact that I was the only person online in my clan for most of the night… I am guessing everyone has had this same thing happen to them. That said I was extremely … [Read more...] about Mirrorball
GDC 2018: Depictions of violence and war in video games and Destiny’s Sword
I love stories. Maybe it’s the teacher in me, but I love stories not just for their raw entertainment value, but for their ability to teach. It’s not heavy-handed like being in class, but stories teach culture, customs, and character. We visit the past, the present, the future. We experience things through stories we might never get to experience for ourselves. War, I hope, is one of those things. Andrew Barron, Director of Design at Bohemia Interactive Simulations, has seen war. And war stories. He’s also been in the game industry for awhile, both before and after his time as a U.S. Marine in Afghanistan. He knows war, but he also knows war simulators. It’s actually his job to help build them. So when says our games our violent, he knows what he’s saying, but the context for that may not be easily understood. However, once it is, you’ll see that not only do we have some games getting war “right,” but that there’s room for us to … [Read more...] about GDC 2018: Depictions of violence and war in video games and Destiny’s Sword