Category: Video Games

If the word ‘reeducate’ unironically shows up in your gaming post, just delete the entire post.

Seriously. If at any point in an essay or argument you find yourself saying how players of video games (or any other amusement) need to be ‘reeducated,’ I am afraid that you have pretty much hosed your position, and you should definitely abandon it on the spot.  Don’t throw good money after bad on this one, folks: you won’t be able to salvage whatever you’ve already invested anyway.  Instead, you have to show some moral courage and cut your losses.

Why?  Because when you’re at the point of discussing the best way to make people change their minds on something, whether they want to or not, then you are at least flirting with the idea that people are things.  …That attitude rarely ends well. It certainly won’t end in ‘reeducation.’

Moe Lane

PS: If I was gonna link to the article that spawned this thought, I would have.

So somebody did a Fallout 4 Enclave mod.

To be honest, I’m probably not going to download Enclave Resurgent, mostly because I am gingerly trying to navigate through the thicket to get a three-faction ending where former Paladin Danse is safely administering my Nuka World possessions for me*.  Also, I have my own half-fanon, half-metagaming theory about the Enclave in Fallout 4: to wit, I think that Bethesda originally intended them to be there, but the game got too big, so they got downgraded to the Gunners. And, also: I’ve noticed that when there’s a certain tone in the description of a mod – a slightly aggressive, somewhat exasperated tone – you can’t really expect good bug support.  And there’s always going to be bugs in mods.

Still, if you’re missing having the Enclave around this is certainly going to give you that.

Moe Lane

PS: Short version: the Enclave is the remnant of the old, pre-War US government.  They’re generally schmucks, but they always had good gear.

*The Commonwealth will be too dangerous for him, and Far Harbor is too weird. Nuka World is perfect.

My Day One Reaction to Conan Exiles.

This ‘die and lose all your stuff’ mechanic is kind of annoying. It would be infinitely less annoying if you could create permanent spawn points instead of one-shot ones. Or do what The Secret World does, which is simply damage all of your stuff whenever you die. Or even let you keep the pick-axe, thus allowing you to quickly gear up again at the lower levels. Or… a bunch of other things, really.  Mind you, this is all Early Access, so hopefully they’ll start adjusting this soon.

Moe Lane

PS: Yeah, I bought it.  It’s FunCom, after all, and I am still a Secret Worlder even if the last original-content update was kind of lame. I can only hope that they’ll go back to updating TSW with stuff in the near future…

This Conan Exiles video game article will unleash your inner 13 year old male. (Links NSFW!)

Why?  Well, because of this (DO NOT CLICK THAT LINK WHILE YOU ARE AT WORK, unless your boss has a similarly low sense of humor) reveal: “While no Early Access launch date was given for Conan Exiles, this open world survival game features a character creation menu which allows players to choose which level of nudity they want, and there is also an “endowment slider,” where players can decide how large or small their character’s penis is, or, for the female characters, how large or small their breasts are.” …And then, just in case you were wondering whether they were exaggerating in any way, shape or form, the author provided some handy pictures.  And some animations from the game demonstrating the, ah, physics involved.  Apparently, you can adjust the clothing levels, from tasteful to, well, nekkid.

Some thoughts, in no particular order: Continue reading This Conan Exiles video game article will unleash your inner 13 year old male. (Links NSFW!)

Masaya Nakamura has passed.

He was 91.  For those who don’t know: Masaya Nakamura was the CEO of Namco, which is of course the company that gave us Pac-Man. It is not that video games would have never been created if Namco had stayed exclusively in the amusement park ride business; it is that the entire industry would be different today if Namco had. Arcade games shaped them from the start, and arcade games are the way that they are based on decisions made by Nakamura.  That’s a powerful influence to have on popular culture.

My condolences to his family and loved ones.

Dragon Age: Origins on mega-Steam sale.

Don’t bother with the $4.99 version, if you haven’t played Dragon Age: Origins before: just get the Ultimate Edition for $7.49.  It’s so absolutely worth it.  I may have told this story before, but: I bought it first, and then my wife watched me play it for a bit, and then she asked if she could have her own gamesave (which of course she could), and then she got her own copy, and then we upgraded her computer so that it could play it properly, and it turned out that naturally my machine needed upgrading… seriously, it was addictive. My wife compared it to ‘a mediocre tabletop RPG campaign,’ which is actually an amazing compliment.  Getting a computer to fake it that well is no easy task.

Check it out.

Via