REDUX: Our Enemies Should be Better Than us

As long as I resist you, I live.

Enemy AI is a tricky subject. In almost any AAA title, there is some debate about the competency of the enemy. Even games that I consider difficult, have glaring omissions in the capabilities of the foes I face. The general push from most developers is to find a middle ground for enemy competence. It's one of many ploys to win the game more players; a push not towards innovation, but towards stable market returns. I think this particular area is ready for a shakeup, and there are a few games that have come tantalizingly close to pushing that envelope.

E3 Showed us VR Done All Wrong

Image Source: cbsnews.com

Long ago, I worked at T-Mobile. This isn't the part where you pity me and my wretched past, I had a good time there and learned a great deal about the mobile industry; but I digress. I'm bringing up this old man on the back porch style story because I was there when the first android phone, the HTC G1 (or Dream) was released. I snapped up my little black brick as soon as I could. There were tons of people out there who said that the Android OS would never flourish in the face of Apple's monolithic iPhone sales and popularity, especially as an open-source program. And yet, years later, Android devices have taken 80% of the worldwide market with Apple's iOS holding a measly 15%. Why trot this out now? Because I think the future of VR lies in it being open for all and there has been a lot of talk about proprietary games for Oculus and Sony VR.

The Problem With Gray Market Games

There are tons of ways to buy games these days. For PC gamers, physical copies of games are largely a thing of the past, almost completely overshadowed by digital distribution. The myriad sources for peoples games includes Steam, Humble Bundle, GOG, and Origin. On top of those store fronts, on any given day you can find dozens of bundles available online offering a host of games for obscenely low prices.

I've bought numerous Humble Bundles over the years and have occasionally ended up with a key or two that I don't want/need. I've always given those extra codes to friends and family members, but there are many people who sell them through sites like G2A. G2A offers keys in what is essentially an Ebay like storefront allowing people to make a few bucks off the keys they sell. It all seems harmless enough on the surface, but there are some really shady parts of this structure you may not be aware of.

Four Haiku about The Death Stranding Trailer

A lot of people seem to be very excited about Death Stranding, the new game from Kojima, announced at E3. All we have is a trailer. A trailer without context or narration that features a naked Norman Reedus cradling an infant attached to him by an umbilicus. I don't know how to be excited about this. I can't even interpret it at all. So instead, we've all chipped in and written some haiku about the trailer. We hope you enjoy them, they are about as informative as the trailer itself.

Eternal Darkness: Meta's Requiem

14 years late, but I've finally managed to get my hands on a copy of Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. For those too young to remember, Eternal Darkness was a Gamecube game that broke serious ground in the horror genre. It is a ghost story and a love letter to Lovecraft. It takes into account the gamer mindset, as well as the mindset of the characters you play in game and actively uses it against you. It is a game that purposefully messes with the player more than any other game I have played in recent memory. In order to get the most out of it, the game asks only that you be in the right mindset to play,  something that no game has ever mastered.

DOOM 2016

Image source: xbox.com

I like to have some witticism in my post titles, but DOOM, deserves to be DOOM.  I went into this expecting for it to be a continuation of the DOOM 3 storyline, I was very wrong, and I'm happy I was wrong.  DOOM 2016 is more like they took DOOM II and remastered it, brutalized it, threw it through a blender with some argent energy, drip fed this through some story. What coalesced from that  union is quite simply, a force of nature.

Massive Sale at Alluria Publishing!

It has come to my attention that Alluria Press, creators of some of my favorite materials in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, are having a massive sale in an attempt to raise funds to continue producing new product. This is an amazing company who makes amazing products, and I can't tell you what an incredible deal you're being offered on their campaign setting, Cerulean Seas, for under $6!!! More than that, every .pdf in their library is on sale for 70% off, so if you're already a fan, this is your chance to fill out any holes in your library.