L.A. Noire

I'm always ashamed when I have to say something that betrays my nerd cred.  Like when I had to fess up that I never actually played Portal.  So, to add another log to that fire: I've never played a Rockstar game.  No Grand Theft Auto, no Red Dead Redemption, and no Bully.  I feel appropriate levels of shame, and am happy to announce that it is no longer true, for I've polished off my swapped copy of L.A. Noire this past weekend.

Title Screen, rocking the Noire Neon Treatment.

L.A. Noire tells the story of Cole Phelps, a returned war hero serving as a cop circa 1947 in the growing city of Los Angeles.  Phelps begins as a patrol officer and then works his way up (and then, down) the complicated command chain of detectives in the LAPD.  For the gameplay, the game is much more Heavy Rain than Fallout 3 - you have a firearm, but rarely resort to using it.  For the most part, you are in an interactive fiction, instead of being in a shooter game.  A happy surprise!

More happiness, and review; after the jump!

Nuka Break: Episode One

It's not a secret that I'm sort of in love with Zack Finfrock.  And not just in a lusty way, but also because the man has some talent: acting, designing, writing.  He's like - the Hollywood everyman.  You might also remember that I was super excited about his new project Nuka Break spinning off into a series of webisodes.  Well the first one is ready to go, so check it out!

Fallout: New Vegas DLC - Honest Hearts

I wish I had better things to say about the Fallout: New Vegas DLC Honest Hearts, but - well - the truth of the matter is ... this DLC is okay.  Just okay.

Joshua Graham, the Burned Man.

The story is that of Caesar's former second-in-command, Joshua Graham, now known as The Burned Man.  So named is Graham because after failing Caesar, the ruthless slave leader burned Graham on a pitch, tossed him into the Grand Canyon and commanded his troops to never again speak his name.

But he lived through the experience, and now is the leader of some tribals of the Zion National Park area.  Now he and another tribal group are debating whether to fight or flee from the oppressive White Legs who aim to eliminate the other tribes of Zion and the Burned Man in order to curry favor with Caesar.  Graham seeks a solution of war with the White Legs, while religious leader Daniel wants a peaceful resolution.

So yeah, there's that.  But without exploring the Zion area, the plot goes ridiculously fast.  However, there's plenty of Zion to explore.  And - unlike Dead Money - there is an enjoyable plethora of enemies.  Some of them are direct replicas of those found in the Mojave (we got Geckos and coyotes, etc.), but there are a couple new things (or sort of new, like Yao Guai).

The real fun comes from the hidden journal entries of a man living in the Zion caves called the Survivalist.  Discovery of this story was the most enjoyable part of this DLC for me.

There's some nice tie-in with the main storyline, but all-in-all - it's just okay.

Oh look!  A Giant Spore Plant!

Distracted?

No really, officer.  I've been - working - like all the time.

Sorry for the absenteeism, faithful followers. The beginning of the semester, and not playing L.A. Noire, has been taking up all my time recently.  If I was, say, playing a new video game that required me to determine whether in-game characters were lying by observing their facial patterns, surely I would have had time to write a review of it, or at least confirm that I was alive.

I promise that as soon as things slow down at work, everything will be much more update-y.  Might have some words about The Hunger Games which I'm trying to read, as well.

Help r/UNT win!

There is a gnarly competition happening over at http://www.reddit.com/ - and as you know the internet is serious business.  So please go to http://www.reddit.com/r/unt to help The University of North Texas acheive excellence.  This is a thing (competition link).  If we win, UNT will be recognized as a reddit-active school, and that could seriously be a motivator for bringing new students to campus.  If you don't think that's worth a quick click, you are forgetting that we dumped a lot of money into our new stadium in hopes it would do that same thing.

So what can you do?  Easy!

• Visit r/UNT - visit it every day!  Visit it every hour!  Every minute!
• Join Reddit and subscribe to r/UNT - become a redditor and discover how to lose all sense of time and space!  You'll wonder what you ever did before you found it.
• Post UNT-related stories to r/UNT, especially stuff that is relevant, like how you can get free condoms at the health center, or a picture you took of the albino squirrel, or a self.post on how much you loved your time there.  Maybe you have an old picture of the Bruce Hall ghost.  Scan that shit and put it up!

Not from UNT? - well, I don't want to lose this competition, but you should check out to see if your school has a subreddit and help out their campaign (fair's fair).

Demo: Bastion

My shield deflects and enemy missile?
What a novelty!

Bastion, the long awaited (for me) game that released from indie developer Supergiant is now available on Steam, as is its first-level demo.  The game is action role-playing, like Legend of Zelda.  Your character can wield six unique items, three of which are available in the demo.  Also available are techniques and a shield, which can be used to deflect enemy attacks and missiles.

Because of "the calamity," the unknown event which brought apart the world's devastation, there is nothing around you.  As you explore, the world rebuilds itself, flying out of nothingness.  Every action taken (bashing items, dying, etc.) is narrated as you go, giving the game a very organic feel.

The titular central hub of the game, Bastion.

Battle is standard adventure-rpg faire: block when you are attacked, strike back when you have the chance, etc.

You gain experience and level up, but the demo only gives you a look into the first level (for which an additional set of HPs are not unwelcome).  As you level up, however, you gain the ability to apply tonics which supplement your abilities, bringing in an excellent factor of customization.

Looks like a great game, and now it's available on Steam!  But will it be cheaper in time?  We shall wait and see.

Tonic customization.

Demo: Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale

The items featured in the window tell customers what you primarily sell.

It's not often you get a feel for how the other half lives, but that's exactly what we get in Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale (demo available on Steam).  It's the oldest story in the world: girl's father leaves adventuring and a mysterious fairy loan shark visits the girl telling her t hat she owes some ungodly amount of money on her father's behalf.  She lives in an adventuring town, so why not open an adventuring shop to make back the required gold?

To this end, Recette (the player) and her loan shark/item shop partner, Tear, buy goods low, and sell them high! With a payment lurking every 7 days, it's sometimes stressful when your worried that the poor little Recette might be out of luck without your skillful intervention.

Command changes to the adventurer you hire,
for dungeon crawling hack and slash.

To get items, you may buy them wholesale, or from patrons looking to sell (you're like a pawn shop).  Additionally, you can hire adventurers to go out with you into dungeons to defeat monsters and loot chests.  The adventurers will be equipped with any items they have bought in your store, so it behooves you to consider wisely in item placement and sales to adventurers.

The demo takes you through the first week and the recruitment of a base-level adventurer.  The graphics are quaint, but they really work for the game.  There is plenty of tongue-in-cheek dialogue, which is actually pretty welcome, since the premise is silly anyway.  We also get a glimpse of a rival shopkeeper, so that promises to be interesting.  Also, we really ought to find out what happened to your father and why he burdened you with this massive debt.

Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is a great grab, even though it's no longer on sale on Steam.  Highly recommend that you run the configuration program prior to playing or you may hit every button on the keyboard before learning that Z was the default key for "Accept."  (Z?  Seriously?)

Do Better Graphics Make Better Games?

While L.A. Noire (r/gameswap'd for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and Heavy Rain) and Catherine (friend swapped for Dragon Age: Origins) lie in wait of a playthrough - not to mention the new Dragon Age II DLC and Bioshock 2 DLC I've bought, but haven't played, and the Fallout: New Vegas DLC I've nearly finished and have to review - I spent an inordinate amount of time with Crono Trigger, replaying the 16-bit classic for memories and love.

It forced me to think: do better graphics make a better game?

With new games, graphics are often a huge selling point: the ability to create and immerse a player in distinct and lushish environments is part of what makes the game worth it.  However, indie developers (and some big names, too) have rejected this notion - the simplier, easier times might have a place left after all.  Consider the success of Scott Pilgrim or Megaman 9, which embraced the chunky graphics of old with a new niche.  Or hell, MINECRAFT for that matter.

In fact, there are many times in which the graphical beauty of a game, while pretty to look at, distracts from the game itself.  Form and functionality.

Graphics also deny the player's imagination in the same way television and films do for books.  If the representation I am given of Link in The Legend of Zelda is an 8-bit pixel mess, my mind bridges the difference.  In Twilight Princess, there's nothing for my imagination to do: for the game has done it already.  For a game embracing a concept of realism (Heavy Rain, for example), this is a make-or-break thing, but for fun, and unrealistic worlds, why bother with the realism of the hairs on a man's head if I'm already accepting the disbelief that I can carry seventeen different swords?

16-bit sprites really embody the best of both worlds: enough definition to give you a start, but not so much as to disrupt your imagining of a character.  Maybe that's why Crono Trigger got a chunk of my time.  Or maybe because the graphics were limited, programmers felt more willing (or able) to give the story and dialogue the time they needed to be perfect.

Suddenly, New Games!

By trading played games, I have come to acquire new ones!  However, I have avoided the beast of Gamestop (which, despite frequent criticism, is a store that offers a service which people are taking advantage of), and done my trading via friendship and r/gameswap.

Want: Wireless Controller

So pretty.

It's just so pretty.  How could I not want this?

Flash Game Friday: Hyperpipe

Pipe Dream-esque games have always fascinated me.  Hell, I even liked the hacking in Bioshock (there!  I said it!).  However, I can barely get my mind around Hyperpipe, which no only wants you to connect pipes, but do so without leaving any pipes unconnected.

Far from being frustrating, the game is actually best played with a cup of coffee and some Whisperings PureStream piano happening in the background.  Kick it!

Minecon Registration Opens Tomorrow!

I know that I am financially unable to attend the big hoorah that has been planned around Minecraft's release, Minecon, in Las Vegas, NV, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't check out the Mojang blog for details!

Fallout: New Vegas - Lonesome Road DLC

The final DLC package (or ... final announced DLC package) for Fallout: New Vegas has been delayed, according to the Bethesda Blog.  The DLC supposedly tells of the Courier's past and why he was selected for the job which sparked the events in New Vegas revolving around the diabolical Mr. House.

While the delay certainly isn't good news, any news about a deepening storyline is good news in my book.

Podcasts Worth Listening To

You've got a limited amount of time in your life, so don't waste it with a podcast that doesn't give you everything you are looking for.  Check these podcasts out:

1. Too Beautiful to Live with Luke Burbank: I gave this podcast a try on a bit of a whim, after hearing Burbank on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me: The NPR News Quiz.  TBTL is hilarious, contemporary, and updates every weekday. 
2. Giant Bombcast is a whomping 2.5 hour (!!) weekly podcast where four hapless gamers discuss their past week.  While this might sound as boring as it could, the show works because the guys have real personality and good, soulful voices. 
3. The Six Pack: again, a podcast I was turned on to from my undying love of Wait, Wait and one of its frequent panelists, Mo Racca.  Mo was featured on The Six Pack which is two (cute) guys talking news, celebrities, life, and being gay dudes.  Great fun for a weekly podcast subscription.
4. And of course Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me - how can you not love Peter Sagal's hosting us through this dynamic (and often hilarious) exploration of the weeks news through limericks, lightning rounds and bluffs?

Don't have an app to listen to these awesome podcasts?  They're all available with iCatcher!

Fallout: New Vegas DLC - Dead Money

Old World Blues certainly gave me a run for my money this past week, but today I was able to sit down and plug away at Fallout: New Vegas' first expansion pack Dead Money.  Was it as good as OWB?  Check out the review, after the jump!

Bastion Coming to PC!

I'm more excited than I can speak to, because Bastion is coming to the PC via Steam!

Bastion is an action-RPG that I've been excited about since reading about it on GayGamer.net September last year.  Then, I was somewhat sad, because it was Xbox only, and now I'm happy again!

Flash Game Friday: Word Bacon

Do you love bacon?  I know you do.

Do you love word games?  Who doesn't?

Put them together and you've got Word Bacon, a fun little letter-replacement game made by a Redditor named seebs.  The objective is simple, you are trying to take one word and make into another by replacing letters.  Every replacement must construct a new word, so it's a tricky brain teaser.  At normal mode it's okay, but at "Holy Swine of Zeus" you might find yourself clicking the "Hint" button every round.

Definitely a contender for your Friday "productivity" time.  Give it a go!

Old World Blues Follow-Up

Bethesda's first attempts at a roll out of DLC for smash hit Fallout 3 were pretty ill-received.  I happened to like The Pitt, which brought up some more complicated moral choices, but that can't be everyone's cup of tea, I suppose.

Giant Roboscorpion!

Old World Blues was, in comparison, an immaculate example of what I had expected from a $9.99 purchase of DLC.  It added approximately 10 hours of playtime, new enemies, new versions of old enemies, new weapons, new perks, new traits, and an engaging and hilarious story. 

I wrapped up the DLC last night, and have to comment that it stayed true to its foundation of quality deliverables through and through.  The story had poignancy and a twist, but not a twist in the way that the writers sat down and said: "we have to think of a twist so that the story maintains relevance.  All stories have unexpected twists!"  Actually, the "twist" is a natural discovery, and it's the exact kind of fun I wanted from the story add-on, and that I had come to expect from Fallout: New Vegas.

Crashes, of course, were an issue; I can't say I wasn't disappointed by the gripping thrust back into reality by watching my character's weapon half-holstered, frozen in time.  It would have made a nice picture had it not been so frustrating.

My recommendation of grabbing this DLC stands, but if I could enhance it - somehow add flavor to it, I would say this: as a male character with the Confirmed Bachelor (gay) perk, I was able to flirt with my brain in a jar.

Really, where else can you experience that?

Dragon Age 2 has MORE DLC?

Why was I not told about this??

Books: Southern Vampire Mysteries

Sarah (whose blog has some to-die-for food pictures, NSFD- not safe for diet) got me interested in True Blood, an HBO series based off of the Sookie Stackhouse books by Charlaine Harris.  The series was addictive, and before long I'd watched a great deal of every episode available for human consumption.  For my birthday, I'd asked to give the foundation books a go, and I've been eating them just as quickly!

The books center on the first-person narrative of Sookie Stackhose, a waitress in Bon Temps, Louisiana's only successful bar, Merlotte's.  Sookie is a twenty-something everywoman, except that she has a "disability" - as she calls it - of telepathy.  When Bill Compton, a vampire walks into Merlotte's, Sookie cannot read his thoughts and finds his silence blissful.

The books (and subsequent HBO series) do the in medias res thing I like so much.  Vampires have "come out of the coffin" and are (mostly) doing their best to fit in with the mortal population, baring the ability to walk in daylight, lest they burn into flames (as they should, Ms. Meyer).  Vampires may be old hat to big cities like New Orleans, but Bon Temps is a whole different story.  This is a helpful literary tool because it allows the reader to gain some backstory on vampires through some of the residents' naivety.

As a reading experience, Dead Until Dark was much closer One for the Money and Evanovich's other Stephanie Plum books, that is to say: funny, witty, with a side of mystery whodunnit thrown in for good measure.  Harris doesn't shove anything down the reader's throat, nor is the revelation a sudden change in direction.  The ending of Living Dead in Dallas did seem a little rushed, but that's my only compliant - and it's minor.  These books are edible and DELICIOUS.

True Blood on the other hand, is a different monster entirely.  The show follows the basic plot points from Harris' text, but spreading a couple hundred pages over 13 full episodes does require some fleshing out.  If you are a fan of the show, you'll likely enjoy the book, but they are not the same.  Whereas the HBO series is dark, sexual, and violent, Harris' books are more fun, and about the relationships (especially between Sookie and her vampire suitor, Bill - and a much-sexier-than-I-had-given-him-credit-for-because-I-didn't-find-the-actor-attractive, Eric).

It's been a perfect summer read, and if you have any interest at all, I'd say you need to sink your teeth into this series.  It's to die for: Sookie Stackhouse 8-copy Boxed Set (Sookie Stackhouse/True Blood)

iPad Apps: iCatcher

Do you have an iDevice?  Do you like podcasts like "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me: The NPR News Quiz?"

Then consider picking up iCatcher!  This app is the only one I've found that successfully syncs video and audio podcasts.  It's very easy to search and download tons of podcasts, and you can set up automic syncing and updates!  For only a couple bucks, it was well worth the investment.

Fallout: New Vegas DLC - Old World Blues

Old World Blues is the most recently released DLC package for Fallout: New Vegas, and it's also the only pack I've had any experience with.  After about five hours of play yesterday, I feel like I've got a good enough grasp to give it a review, even if I haven't played the whole thing (this sort of behavior makes me reek of professionalism, right?).

Firstly, there is about a half hour of dialogue at the beginning of the DLC.  Yes, a half hour.  Do you know how long I wanted it to be?

In-Game Economics 101

EDIT: Oh sure, Washington Post, put up your article at the exact same time I post this, referencing very similar things...  You're on my list, buddy.

Disclaimer!  Some of this discussion comes from the presentation "Understanding Virtual Worlds" that Michelle Kandalaft (a Ph.D. Psychology student and awesome gamer-gal) and I put together at the University of Texas at Arlington.  I am not an expert in Economics, though my mother drew a Supply-Demand graph on a napkin at Denny's when I asked why things cost money at the age of 4.  So, credit where credit is due to Dr. Kandalaft and my mother.

Also, the Amazon.com ad for The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times And Ideas Of The Great Economic Thinkers [7th Edition] was purposeful.  If you haven't read it, you really ought to.

With Blizzard's announcement that Diablo 3 will feature a system for users to sell in-game items for real-world currency, gaming blogs and twitters have erupted with interest over the decision.  While to many this seems a formalizing of a long-standing system (gold-farming), the nature of in-game trade for real-life currency is not unheard of in Virtual Worlds.

TL;DR (because really, this is TL):  Economics is complicated.

More (and, lamentably, graphs) after the jump...