Invasion of Reality

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Dreaming with the Marketing People - Prince of Persia: Forgotten Sands

Last month there was an interview on Eurogamer with Ubisoft PR about their gameplay changes to the…

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Dakka Dakka and Tactical Arcade - Dawn of War II

I’ve been watching Star Trek: DS9lately.  It’s such an interesting piece of Science Fiction,…

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Of Anti-Puzzles and Campy-Acting - Zork: Grand Inquisitor

>_look at the game You see Zork: Grand Inquisitor. The last in the long and varied line of Zorkgam…

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Thrillbent - week 2 and a half.

I'm still reading the two webcomics from Thrillbent but I thought the second week was really weak. Arcanum had an over the top action chapter that felt silly. The cop fought three knights and seemingly beat up one of them. It was underwhelming in its lack of realism (even the fantasy kind). The Damnation of Charlie Wormwood was a lot worse though. The comics starts with completely undermining the cliffhanger from the previous chapter (an awful lame fake-out), then it goes on to tell a vaguely related though amusing story and in the process it doesn't move the main plot even by an inch. Eh, I want to believe this will get better but the chapter felt really amateurish. On the positive side, issue 3 of Arcanum that came out this week (http://thrillbent.com/comics/arcanum/arcanum-season-1-issue-3/) was intriguing. I mean, it's still all set up, but the delivery is quite fun.

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Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon looks like every 80s action movie distilled into a game. So it's dumb and there are cyborgs with robo eyes and robo hands and explosions and very Terminatory music. It's marketed in such a way that my wallet and me feel completely defenseless.

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More awesomeness from July DC solicitations. Cliff Chiang rocked this cover. Iconic superheroing plus propaganda. Grand stuff

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Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg) with Paul F Tompkins discuss Agent Coulson and drink some drinks. I like them both and I like drinks.

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(Cartoon Network's Batman of Shanghai short) It is visually stunning, doesn't really have a story of any sort. But it's a cool assortment of familiar concepts - mutating Batman, Catwoman and Bane into Asian heroes/villains and making them fight. I was reminded of this because of my recent play-through of Mark of the Ninja. There are fun similarities between the two in animation and style.

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Trailer for good old Warcraft II. I realized that the narrator guy is one of the things that I love about it so much. It's campy and he most probably had to do strange faces while speaking his lines. To me, it's equally absurd, funny and cool.

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Various DC solicitations for July are up all over the web (as usual). I'm not really interested in most of the stuff but still look through them to see some of the cool covers. The one that caught my attention the most is this cover to Batman Annual #2, drawn by Jock. It's paint and photoshop mixed to create a seemingly simple and empty but immensely atmospheric piece of art.

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It's possibly a third comicbook with Wormwood in the title. I don't know why the comics' creators like the wood and the worms so much but it happens. The Damnation seems to be a black and white (as in colors) thriller (as in no fantasy elements). It starts incredibly well - it lays all the necessary groundwork and delivers a compelling cliffhanger. I'm definitely up for the next part!

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It's TotalBiscuit's video from PAX showing Rise of the Triad remake. I thought the devs are mostly concentrating on the singleplayer, but it turns out the game has an oldschool multiplayer too. It's a rapid firing nostalgia rocket launcher of a multi! Super quick like in the old days. I've got water in my eyes.

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Devs of Defender's Quest discussing storytelling vs gameplay in games. I watched it for the silly pictures but they raise some amusing arguments too. And there's also a description of their creative process of designing the game. Cool food for thought.

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Get a look at this awesome 8-bit variant cover to Avengers AI #1 by Matthew Waite!

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It IS pure awesomeness.

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Christine Love announced a sequel to her visual novel Analogue: A Hate Story and I'm giddy with excitement. (Here's a link for more info.) I've written a lengthier text about my experience with A Hate Story. It has some awesome writing and an ending that made me use my brain for extended amounts of time afterwards. I really adored the whole package. Analogue has multiple endings but I have finished it only once. And that ending was quite disastrous in a lot of ways (also, it seems I won't be able to transfer it to the sequel because of that) BUT that's one of the good things about the game. It feels personal and it cuts the mind with its narrative. I didn't want to touch it again because that would muck up my experience - that emotional roller-coaster. But that was quite a long time ago, and I think I should delve into it again. Do it right and save *Mute.

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I randomly stumbled upon this. All I know is that Killer is Dead which seems to be the title of the game and it looks ridiculous, mad, bloody and over the top. Maybe even slightly dumb. And dumb in right doses is good for your brain. That's what I heard. I want whichever console this will be on.