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Thursday Link Day
It’s Thursday link day!!!
- The Onion AV Club have done another ‘Gateway to Geekery’, this time focusing on H.P. Lovecraft.
- Critical Hits have written a pretty good piece on how to get most (and longest) bang for your buck with Game Workshop minis games.
- Apparently dreaming about games makes you better at them. Does that mean that if you dream about sex you get better at that too? (via Felicia Day‘s twitter.)
- Joss Whedon is bidding for the Terminator rights. Sort of. Background is here. (Via the A.V. Club)
- EuroGamer has a big, informative and pretty balanced article on the campaigns in Germany to ban violent video games.
Some video game links
I’ve been collecting links but had no time to post them. So here you go!
- Regular readers know that Sophie and I are pretty excited about upcoming PC/console RPG Dragon Age and may have even picked up that we’re both planning on playing it on the Xbox 360. Good news for us then because the Kotaku writers have had some time with the 360 version and say the controls work fine!
- There was also an interesting interview with video game designer Tim Schafer about the need for games to expand their subject matter beyond sci-fi and fantasy if the medium is going to grow larger. I could give a fuck about it getting bigger, but he’s probably not wrong.
- Finally, magicians Penn & Teller have dedicated an episode of their show Bullshit! to violent video games – pretty funny stuff.
I need to read a video game blog other than Kotaku. Any suggestions?
Whoa, it’s been busy – but I finished some games!
There’s been lots of stuff to blog about recently, but very little time! This post is the first to attempt to catch up on my blogging, links and the like.
Partly the lack of time is because I’ve finished two Xbox games this week – at last. Both Fallout 3 and Grand Theft Auto IV fell under my controllers mighty … yeah. GTA also marks another step towards getting one of my 2009 resolutions down - so now I just have to finish one of Rainbow 6: Vegas, Bioshock, Mass Effect or Call of Duty 4.
GTA 4 was a fantastic game – it only took me this long to finish because I kept dying in the final mission. I’ve written about it before here and my thoughts haven’t changed really. It’s probably the best realised storytelling experience in the history of video games. I started the DLC pack The Lost & The Damned today as well so I hope that lives up to the expectations of the full game.
Fallout 3 was excellent as well, although no where near the accomplishment of GTA IV. Bethesda did capture the Fallout feel, even if they didn’t manage the humour so well, but I’ll play a Fallout 4 from them, and I’ll definitely take a look at New Vegas when that comes out. I’m glad they resurected the series.
The main achievement was the size of the world I think – it felt both empty and full at the same time and walking though the wasteland was a genuinely scary experience at lower levels. I do wonder who the raiders raided all the time, but I guess the answer is ‘each other’. That said, the story began to lose momentum towards the end and the final few episodes are a bit of a railroad. The actual ending sucks as well – a total anticlimax. I’m told that’s changing with the Broken Steel DLC that came out yesterday.
I think both of these games have shown it’s possible to have genuinely deep gaming experiences on the console, even if the controls aren’t as complex and the inventory not as limitless (although Fallout has a pretty good inventory system).
Inbred – a real life RPG inspiration
This is a fairly technical article about the effect of inter-family marriage on the Hapsburg Dynasty in Spain. The point of it is this: inbreeding by royalty wasn’t just a myth. It was a real and hugely damaging part of keeping the bloodlines ‘pure’.
The last king of the Spanish Habsburg dynasty was Charles II. He was physically disabled, mentally retarded and disfigured. He proved impotent since no children were born from his two marriages.
This seems like it could have some pretty rich ideas for RPG settings. Perhaps demihumans don’t suffer from the same effect, leading to elvish rulers marrying their siblings and cousins? What do other cultures think about this and how does it affect their relations with the elves? Perhaps the ruler of a local kingdom is suffering from the same problem as the Spanish Hapsburgs. Is this an opportunity for the PCs to take the throne?
What other RPG plots could come from inbreeding?
More Fallout
Sophie beat me to the punch with her Fallout post, but here’s a bit more.
Shacknews interview with Bethesda’s marketing vice-president about Fallout: New Vegas.
Also, the next lot of DLC for Fallout 3 comes out on May 5. Kotaku has a whole bunch of info on it.
I still haven’t finished Fallout 3 but have decided to get back on the main quest so expect some more reactions soon! Once I finish the main game then I’m planning to get all three DLC packs as well.
Brisbane geek shopping
I’m in Brisbane for a day for work and thought I’d take a break this afternoon and check out a couple of geek-related shops: Ace Comics & Games and Pulp Fiction. This is the first of my travel related shop reviews – I’ll do them as I go to visit places but please note that they’re just impressions from (usually) a single visit. › Continue reading