Month: February 2009

Harvey Danger’s Latest Album Completely Free

Remember that single they had way back when, Flagpole Sitta? Well, now that they’re independent, they’ve decided to release their latest album completely free. No strings attached, no DRM, no shenanigans. I haven’t listened to it yet, myself, but regardless I thought it was pretty cool.

Download it here

And you can find their reasons for doing this here.

Oh, and I realize I’m pretty late to the punch, as it appears the album was released in 2005, but still, I thought it was cool.

Free Castle Crashers King Pack DLC

If you’ve got an Xbox and Castle Crashers (and if not, why not, damnit!? ;)), then you’ll be interested to know that the King Pack DLC that adds a few characters, weapons, and a pet; can be obtained for completely free if you act fast enough. The Behemoth, the developers of the wonderful little game, wanted the DLC to be free, but MS said no, so they priced it at 160 points (2 of our human dollars). So The Behemoth went and bought a ton of these DLC packs and are now giving them away for free.

So, what do you have to do to get a code? Well, just go to the Behemoth Loves Me thread on the official forums and make a post stating, you guessed it: “Behemoth Loves Me”. Then wait patiently as they manually send you a code that you can punch in on Live.

via Destructoid

Closure

I don’t play alot of flash games these days (and I know I JUST posted another one), but a blog I read mentioned this and I was so blown away I had to mention it here. I’m not going to say anything about the game, cause I don’t want to spoil it, just see for yourselves.

Closure.

Karoshi: Suicide Salaryman

This little flash game is nuts, but also quite alot of fun. It’s a puzzle game where you need to kill yourself in creative ways using the tools available..

“Karoshi” is a Japanese word and means “death by overwork”. In this game many things are not what you’d expect and the goal of each level is counter-intuitive: you need to die.

Each stage presents a new challenge. There are several objects you can use to solve puzzles, and in later levels the game will even break it’s own rules to surprise you.

50 clever levels and a boss fight at the end. We hope you have fun (killing yourself)!

Karoshi Suicide Salaryman

So I got a PSP

I got a bonus from work recently so decided to have a little fun since it has basically been months of penny pinching. Also with the promotion I got it added to the funds. So I went a bit crazy.

I went and got myself a PSP. For a few reasons. One is I want an MP3 player and luckily enough it plays games too lol I also wanted one for quite awhile. I think now it has a more generous lineup which makes it more worth while. Also sales have been surging in Japan for the device and also increasing in NA so it was a slow take off. But it means more good things are coming. I ended up with the Ratchet and Clank bundle. This bundle includes the PSP 2000 model, Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters, National Treasure 2 and a voucher for Echocrome.

I booted the machine up and if you played a PS3 it is a similar menu which I love for simplicity sake. I easily added it to the network and just as easilyconnected it via my PS3. This is kind of cool as I can down PSP/PS3 games via PSN and upload it to the PSP for travel play. So all those PS1 games, etc can be brought for on the go playing. To me this is awesome and a good example of digital distribution. I heard MS was thinking the same but they are determining how to pull it off well. Regardless this is pretty cool. Another cool yet not totally needed feature is Skype. I cannot do texting but I can do voice chat. It is pretty good, very pretty. Will need to test it out though to see how good it really is. Aside from that it has an RSS feader which I alread set to Kotaku.

So I played a bit of Echocrome. My initial reaction is that it is very relaxing game and very good. Gets you to think in various perspectives as you try to get your guy around various levels. Has to be one of the better indie games I have played.

I watched NT2 last night via the UMD disc. As a format and viably trying to get people to buy them I think it fails. Why spend $15 on a UMD movie when you cannot play it on your DVD right. Not to mention there are no real special features. I think they could do very well by adding a digital version of the movie on all DVD or make them downloadable via the PSN.They are roughly 1GB in size so depending on the memory card you would still have enough room for saves. I hope they go this route as I actually really enjoyed the movie. The quality was most excellent and it showed to me personally that it is a viable media system. For me who is on the train this is just awesome. So here is hoping they fix this.

I assume R&C:SM is just a port of the PS2 version in which case I say, awesome port. It is fun, witty and gorgeous. That is what you get with a portable PS2 I suppose. In all I am very happy with it. I also bought for a modest $14 Killzone Liberation. I love the cheap games.

So aside from that I bought another PS3 game called The Club. Kinda like a Manhunt type game from Sega. I got this used for a mighty $4.00. Even if the game blows I win lol I also got Resistance: Fall of Man. Want to know what this GoW competitor is like and to also take advantage of the PS3 network a bit.

Speaking of which I also picked up SOCOM Confrontation. I heard it was good but needed some patching and recently it got a mega patch which addressed a lot of complaints people had. This promted me to reavaluate if I wanted it or not. Hearing all the gripes were fixed I got it. I got the version that comes with the Bluetooth headset. Either way it made up for the tag of $49.99 for the mic alone.

And well thats it for now lol I think it is enough. Should keep things quite busy. I will give further impressions on the PSP as I use it more but if you have a PS3 it is pretty much a must have if your looking for a portable gaming platform.

Jhonen Vasquez does a sorta-review of Flower

It really should come as little surprise that Jhonen Vasquez has a blog (and a Twitter account, it seems), but to be honest the thought didn’t cross my mind up until this was posted on one of the gaming blogs I read.

If you’re scratching your head as to who this character is, he’s the guy who created both Johnny the Homicidal Maniac as well as our beloved Invader Zim.

Regardless, it’s an interesting read, and I recommend checking it out via the link below.

I love climbing and slaughtering collosi or  tearing people limb from limb, channeling the anger from being tricked by Ares into slaughtering  my innocent family as much as the next virtual escapist, but I’m always interested in games that present an experience far enough removed from the usual thing to be looked thought of not as a mere game but as a more artistic extension and expression of something as abstract as human dreams.  Not to say that tearing someone’s arms off, impaling them against a door and then kicking them to open said door isn’t something we’ve all dreamed of, but something a bit more scaled back as the ability to fly is a nice diversion as well, and more today’s subject.

FLOWER: Relax, dammit, via Mindspill

Retro Game Challenge

This is actually loosely based on a Japanese gameshow called Retro Game Master where a guy tries to see how far he can get in a classic game in one day. The concept of the game being that an evil version of this guy, Arino, gets fed up with sucking at games so he pulls you back in time to his childhood to have you play through the games for him. The game is on the DS and is wonderfully “meta”, as you can often chat with the young version of Arino about games, flip through magazines for tips and tricks, etc. The game has 8 different games within it that you have to play through, a few of them being sequels and variations. Still, it looks very interesting. and definitely unique.

How goes it?

How goes it everyone? Hope all is going well. Things are looking up over here. Things have been more on the up and up then they have been in a long time. So it’s creating overall positiveness.

Been painitng my Immolator on and off. It’s going quite well I suppose. White paint is not exactly easy to play with but otherwise things are too my satisfaction. Very basic stuff. On one section that is hidden I tried some black gesso primer diluted with a bit of water. I wanted to see the feasibility of using other non citadel products. It worked out really well and quite pleased with the texture. Basically one container of this gesso acrylic paint is equivalent to about 11 – 12 bottles of citadel paint. The Immolator itself is coming along. A few guns to paint and touch ups and it should be all done. Ready for the war…so then we need to paint the troops lol

Started playing Warhammer online. This came about by the painitng enthusiasm as well as a mix of both a book I am reading and some new information gleamed from the patch updates for the game. They have fixed a lot of things lately and pretty happy with it from my early goings. Now you may have heard that a lots of subs dropped off but thats probably normal considering that back then the game needed more oomph.  From what I am reading in interviews, see in patches is that it’s here and coming. Quests are being added, dungeons being added, two already new classes with two new ones on the way. All which were missing from release. In june there is a new area, that of the Tomb Kings which should be pretty awesome. I think it’s just very hard financially and perception wise to stay strong as an MMO against the WoW juggernaut. People don’t like to wait and see if it grows and I have a sense that along with missing elements is due to the recent drop off of subs.I also think the lack of official community site really burned them. But everyone learns I suppose as thats another thing on the way along with also the major cities that were cut. Essentially the game that should have come out which is kind of sad to say.

Either way I made a Knight of the Burning Flame. Picked a med pop server and begun the journey. Just some quickies I noticed was that performance has increased, more quests and a live event. It unfortunately ended just when I resubbed but there is another one starting which if you do whatever you can have early access to the new classes. One being the Orc Choppa! Should be interesting. I was able to do two public scenarios which were pretty cool.

Aside from that been playing Jericho. Cool game though kind of annoying. Basically you control a squad of soldiers who have powers of some sort. Your in an ancient city to fight this evil about to be released. The game itself is entertaining as I like the story. The game is setup in small levels which is good as you feel like you get more done and bad in the each one has a cut scene. This is good and bad depending on what I mentioned. One thing that is aggravating is there is not much controlling to do with your squad. So they die really easy and fast making you restart the level. This is my biggest aggravation as difficulty ranges from sleep walking to wtf just sat on me.

And yeah that pretty much it over here. Oh, go see Friday the 13th. Me and Neil went to go see it last friday obviously and it was fantastic. An awesome reboot with lots of easter eggs. It was actually kinda scary and not much cheese.

Piracy not so bad after all

The PC Gaming Alliance basically confirmed what many already knew to be the case. Piracy actually drives success in the industry. Personally, I’m sure I wouldn’t have bought as many games as I continue to today, if it weren’t for piracy solidifying my interest in PC gaming.

The PC Gaming Industry’s history is littered with examples of startups (including Stardock and Valve) that actually benefited from wide spread piracy to grow a market for their future titles. Don’t get me wrong, I am not advocating piracy… However, how would Quake, Doom, Starcraft, Counter-Strike, or Half-Life have been able to grow widespread brand recognition without a widespread network of gamers openly sharing these games. These titles (and many more) defined the industry. Personally, my first experience with a first person shooter was with Doom (back in the day) and I did not pay for it. Id Software turned the corner and has a very successful business built on the back of the early free/open source exchange of their games…

via Kotaku

Satellites Collide Over Siberia

Two big communications satellites collided in the first-ever crash of two intact spacecraft in orbit, shooting out a pair of massive debris clouds and posing a slight risk to the international space station.

NASA said it will take weeks to determine the full magnitude of the crash, which occurred nearly 500 miles over Siberia on Tuesday.

“We knew this was going to happen eventually,” said Mark Matney, an orbital debris scientist at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

NASA believes any risk to the space station and its three astronauts is low. It orbits about 270 miles below the collision course. There also should be no danger to the space shuttle set to launch with seven astronauts on Feb. 22, officials said, but that will be re-evaluated in the coming days.

The collision involved an Iridium commercial satellite, which was launched in 1997, and a Russian satellite launched in 1993 and believed to be nonfunctioning. The Russian satellite was out of control, Matney said.

The Iridium craft weighed 1,235 pounds, and the Russian craft nearly a ton.

via Yahoo! News

The Science of Romance

In humans, there are four tiny areas of the brain that some researchers say form a circuit of love. [Dr. Bianca] Acevedo, who works at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, is part of a team that has isolated those regions with the unromantic names of ventral tegmental area (VTA), the nucleus accumbens, the ventral pallidum and raphe nucleus.

The hot spot is the teardrop-shaped VTA. When people newly in love were put in a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine and shown pictures of their beloved, the VTA lit up. Same for people still madly in love after 20 years.

The VTA is part of a key reward system in the brain.

“These are cells that make dopamine and send it to different brain regions,” said Helen Fisher, a researcher and professor at Rutgers University. “This part of the system becomes activated because you’re trying to win life’s greatest prize – a mating partner.”

via azcentral