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Articles about game design, games journalism, the games industry or maybe just games. Chill takes over hot takes, every time.
Saw a commission post float by on Twitter and decided to snag up a couple more icons for use on thumbnails/etc, this time from @ChrsArtwork (Deviant Art here). Including my first art of Parker!
From now on I’ll be tossing up a quick post whenever I get commissioned or fan art to share.
Continue reading “New Icons commissioned (from Christopher Jacobs)”
For a while I’ve been wanting to spruce up my channel on Youtube and get some nice consistent Branding™, but I’m no artist. Fortunately, lots of other people are artists, so I commissioned Klobstrosity (Tumblr link with commission contact info) for a new channel art, and…!
So you bought a Steam Controller. We all make mistakes. And it has an issue? Bad luck. And you bought it directly from steam? Oh child.
This isn’t going to be fun, but here’s how to return a Steam Controller. This piece serves both as help, and a healthy dose of criticism of the extremely terrible return process. The process has pretty much been intricately designed to make it not worth returning, and frankly I would recommend selling your hardware on Ebay or something instead.
If you have not purchased a Steam Controller yet, do NOT buy it directly from Steam under and circumstance! Buy it from Amazon, a company with competent support and return services. Though, in my opinion, you shouldn’t buy a Steam Controller at all.
I often hear complaints about Undertale to the effect that it is a “progressive” or “Social Justice Warrior” game. A lot of people despise the game because of this, which I find pretty odd because, having actually played Undertale, it really doesn’t present itself as any such thing. And in fact, upon reflection, I think Undertale is most effective by not presenting itself as being amazing, radical or progressive, but rather humbly including characters that happen to be diverse.
Undertale…doesn’t care. And that’s a good thing, because it doesn’t care about things it shouldn’t have to care about. They’re just there. And maybe we should all care a little less.
Spoiler Alert: I won’t go into TOO much detail here, but it’s pretty impossible to talk about characters’ diversity without some minor spoilers. So if you haven’t played Undertale there could be some spoilers about. Watch your step.
Continue reading “Undertale’s true “progressivism” is that it doesn’t really care”
Recently I imported the latest Neptunia side game, called Super Dimension War Neptunia VS Sega Hard Girls Dream of Coalescence Special AKA Cho Jigen Taisen Neptune VS Sega Hard Girls Yume no Gattai Special AKA 超次元大戦 ネプテューヌVSセガハードガールズ 夢の合体スペシャル
AKA We’re just calling it Neptunia vs Sega Hard Girls okay. I’ve been enjoying it and thought I’d write up a post about the highs and lows so far.
If you’re interested in watching gameplay, I have 6 hours of video from livestreams on my Youtube channel, you can find the first Neptunia vs Sega Hard Girls stream here and the second livestream archive here. That should give you a pretty clear look at the start of the game. I’m also working on a guide for the game I’ll publish soon.
As this is an “import impressions” post, note that I have not fully completed the game (I have played about 10 hours and I would approximate possibly half the game) and I may not properly understand all aspects of the game as it is in Japanese. I do not speak Japanese so I play these games via a combination of Google Translate, trial and error, dumb luck and Determination. If I say something is missing it’s possible I just haven’t seen it, and I may miss otherwise obvious hints in UI text/etc that would have prevented me from making certain mistakes.
Also note the game released last week in Japan–there’s a possibility there will be some patches. Neptunia Victory II actually got quite a few patches to address issues and improve a few things.
Continue reading “Hyperdimension Neptunia vs Sega Hard Girls Import Impressions”
I get asked what tools I while recording use a lot, so I thought I’d toss it all into a nice detailed page to point to. Here you’ll find all the software, hardware and what not I record or livestream with, all of which I personally recommend.
I don’t have any special training, so why some of these tools may not be the absolute best in the biz, they work, they’re easy enough for an untrained spikeball to use and they’re either reasonably priced or free.
I’ll update this whenever new software enters my permanent rotation. Yes Amazon links in this post may be affiliate links. No you do not pay more by visiting an affiliate link.
Last updated 2017-1-30.
Continue reading “What I use to record Let’s Play videos and Livestreams”
(There are some very vague, very technical, very Objective™ spoilers for Undertale below. You probably won’t get the joke if you haven’t beaten Undertale at least once anyway.)
Undertale is a 122.52 MB single player game with “partial” controller support described as an “RPG Game”. The game is rendered at 640×480 pixels like a 30 year old CRT television though almost all ingame art is actually made at a resolution well below 480p. Most enemies are black and white in combat with extremely limited animation. The color pallette is similarly limited, probably 32 colors or less on most screens. The game only uses three buttons and arrow keys.
The game has three endings. Two endings can be achieved at level 1, while the other ending requires more time grinding than playing the game. The “hardest” boss in the entire game has only 1 HP and their attacks can only deal 1 HP in return. The strongest equipment in the game is literally useless. Several fights cannot be lost.
I’ve been trying to figure out just what I’m doing with my channel/website/content in general for a while now, and I’ve finally settled on a few things I think I can make work. The last couple weeks I’ve been working on a lot of that and trying to streamline some processes, and I hope it’s starting to show.
I got one of the first batch of Steam Controllers this Friday and I’ve had an…Interesting™ time with it. I played it with 17 games of various genres to try it out and I’ve got a lot of things to say about it, at the least. You can find my specific experiences with the games at the bottom after the conclusion.
A common reaction to basically any complaint on the internet, but especially in gaming, is “no one cares”. No company is going to change their minds because you complain on twitter, so they say, because after all who cares about one person?
Well, this common knowledge has turned out to be very clearly false. Since just 2013 a myriad of major changes in gaming have occurred due to “internet” outcry. (it’s important to remember that “internet” doesn’t actually make a thing less real, every complaint is from a real, flesh and bone, meat and organ human being.)
Continue reading ““Complaining on the internet” works. #DealWithIt”
