MUZZLE FLASH OF POWAH
WTF Is... - Shadow Harvest?
Normally I would never watch a gameplay vid of a shovelware FPS, but this is just comedy gold. You don’t even need to watch the whole damn thing, just get to the point where you see the gun muzzle bloom effects and bullet time in their full glory. I wonder what their feature design document was like.
P.S:TotalBiscuit is totally awesome. Continue reviewing the indie stuff, especially stuff like this.
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Football Bits and Pieces
This made me chuckle:
“Many times in the last few years, the boss has talked up his youth project by saying that, by bringing in players from a young age and educating them at Arsenal, they develop an identity with the club and are less likely to want to leave.
Like so many of Wenger’s bright ideas in the last few years, this has FAILED..”
Pretty much the ONLY way these days to have some kind of institutional loyalty for footballers is for a cadre of youth academy players to rise up to the first team together (or at least within a constrained period of time like say…3-5 years), and even that is a long shot at best now. I don’t need to really emphasize how difficult for just ONE academy product in the PL to break into the first team, having to compete with tons of foreign intakes that their cash-rich clubs keep bringing in. Even in an anomalous environment like Arsenal, buying young players wholesale from a foreign one doesn’t cut it in the slightest. They’re not old footballers comfortable in their last mile surroundings nor out-of-fashion mid-career players grateful for a second chance. Young footballers uproot themselves only either for trophies or to use the club as a stepping stone. It’s amazing Wenger is still so blinkered in 2011.
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I also see FIFA, now that it’s put that pesky charade of an election to rest, is back to business as usual, leeching money out of the game. Predictably all the big clubs are not amused. It’ll be interesting how far a drunk-on-hubris Blatter is going to keep pushing FIFA down this headbutting road with regards to the other footballing powers.
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And now for the bomber:
I’m sorry, this just reinforces my (already) low, low opinion of football fans in general. It’s just so ridiculously infantile that you think it’s from the Onion, but it isn’t. This all just reminds me of some Newcastle fans claiming that the bare-bellied, fat Toon fans screaming for such figures such as King Kev and Shearer to come and reclaim their club in the past aren’t representative of the fanbase and it’s only the distorted coverage of media outlets such as Skysports that makes it appears to be, but it doesn’t really matter when the supposedly “sane” fans don’t really find call out those in their ranks who are utter nitwits.
As a general rule football fans tend to close ranks when threatened, and the most extreme example in football sports has to be the Pool fanbase, which is incredibly homogeneous in thought. All you need to wander into places such as RAWK to see the circle-jerking and echo chamber effect in its full glory. The league title issue is a massive stick in the craw for them, and the incredible bitterness and toys-out-of-pram behaviour is really a sight to behold. You might think the shirt is a parody or a troll item, but Poe’s Law applies as always.
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Martin Palermo retires for Boca Juniors and it’s an emotional sendoff for h……WAIT A MINUTE
WTH, Mr Palermo? Are you sure that’s an occasion where fans and club pay tribute to you and not a frat hazing ritual?
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Duke Nukem (1991-2011)
So…erm……not very good, I gather?
I find it difficult to say anything that hasn’t already been said on reams of digital paper, but I have heard comparisons of DNF with Superman Returns, another product with a lengthy gestation period. I think there are still significant differences, though, since SR was stuck in development hell for a long time because they could never get to the stage of filming it properly for most of those years. So although many inexplicable millions were wasted on aborted scripts, tentative casting and whatnot, the actual film only got rolling in 2004. DNF, for good or ill, was under active development for 12 years. Sure, most of the effort (indulgent, plodding effort, but still) kept getting binned because Broussard kept repicking engines like a toddler seeing something shiny. But for the result to be this…well, it’s still moderately mind-boggling.
I think there’s a good case to be made that most fans really just wanted DN3D with a fresh coat of paint. Sure, DNF had to be a new game, but it had to feel like DN3D with 2011 (OK, at least 2005) graphical textures and models. And really, the biggest problem of the game, beyond the cosmetic horrifically offensive stuff, was that the game didn’t really feel like a shooter. It felt like a series of mini-games that had some first person shooter elements sprinked through it as an afterthought. The point has also been belabored in all the reviews that it’s a mutant fusion of the worst parts of the FPS genre from the two eras, 90s and 00s. By infusing itself with the linear level designs, regnerating health and limited weapon encumbrance count so prevalent in console shooters, the game was dooming (no pun intended) itself even over the already impressive obstacles it had to face.
I guess this really is the end of the era of “design is law” school of game development. You can blame Broussard and Romero for that, and maybe to a lesser extent, people like Molyneux. Checks and balances is the only way forward these days, especially with development budgets being so bloated. I bet you 300 quatloos the damn tell-all book on the whole damn debacle will sell like nobody’s business. It would probably outsell the game.
P.S: Jaysus, did he really lose that much? Fool and money etc.
“This summer, be prepared to see what you saw…again.”
2012: ICE AGE (Official Trailer)
Someone tell Asylum that their Day After Tomorrow ripoff is a few years late, though I did like the bit at the end. The trailer needs to be more ridiculous…perhaps add more “BE AFRAID, BE VERY AFRAID…” overripe orchestrals?
I did find THIS to be far better in the B-sense. It’s delicious, I can just sense it. And I find it hilarious the only thing Asylum could think of that was noteworthy enough to include in the description was “Starring Debbie Gibson and Tiffany”.
“This court finds you guilty of foul play”
No, just no, “Scholesy”. If you had pulled that defence ten years ago, it MIGHT have carried some water. But at the close of a career, as a post-mortem, one thing is clear. You’re either what everyone accuses you of, or you just didn’t give a shit enough to improve your game enough so that the tag doesn’t apply to you. Attempting tackles (often!) that have no academic difference from that launched by a cynical tackler means you ARE a cynical tackler to everyone else in the world. I would suggest if you didn’t play for Manyoo, IF you weren’t coddled by Fergie, IF English referees and fans didn’t laugh off the most astonishing challenges with the ever-present “Oh, it’s only Scholesy…”, you would find playing for a league bottom-half club with that mentality and behaviour a rude shock. Enough to, say, get you carded straight into Division 2.
Trying the “but I didn’t shear off anyone’s leg” tactic doesn’t work either, the only reason it didn’t happen is just the law of averages. A player in a small club doing the same stuff will do it more often, since the side will generally be under siege by bigger and better teams. Hence, there’s no reason why Scholes won’t do a Shawcross or Taylor if he was forced to ply his trade elsewhere than Manyoo. Working on that side of the game isn’t a waste of time, ESPECIALLY if you keep doing risky tackles as a force of habit. Manyoo would actually benefit from a player that didn’t have zero competence in defence and had to be paired with a water carrier in Keane, Hargreaves, Carrick, Anderson, Fletcher et al, reducing the tactical flexibility of the team. I hate to say it, but now that all their careers are winding down, it’s sad to see the Neviller being the most sensible of Fergie’s bumper crop (besides that pesky problem of trolling Pool).
Oh, since we’re on the subject of repelling footballing objects….this made for unintentional comedy too.
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Can the 90s PLEASE take back its wayward, pen-wielding sons?
As if Liefeld doing stuff for DC wasn’t horrific enough as an abstract concept (much less as reality), he’s restarting a lot of his old properties. A certain Mr Ellis doesn’t seem to be very amused. Need I remind everyone that Liefeld was the Michaelangelo that bought us THIS?
I hope his due dilligence into anatomical research has paid off since, though I suspect at the rate Marvel are using up Captain Americas, the property might become as worthless as Jean Grey soon. All he needs is to reclaim his Sith apprentice Pat Lee and we’ll be all set.
P.S: Can everyone just IGNORE Mr Granito the troll? I’ll appreciate it very much. By next year we should have The Core II ready to hit screens just by filming his fantastic escapades.
I’ll show ’em. I’ll show ’em ALL…