General Discussion [ Page 54 ]

Do DayZ and Permadeath Teach Us How to Face Death?

"Since the heyday of arcades, death has been a key element in videogames. But does it actually teach us anything about our own lives? Over the years developers have created many variations of death in games: 3 lives, checkpoints, saved games...yet the human experience of death is a lot more, well, absolute. We don't have the option to continue or try again. In some games like DayZ, death works the same way: it's permanent. So does this make DayZ's permadeath a more meaningful gaming experience?"

Really like the dissection of permadeath in the latest episode of Game/Show. As usual the show goes into some depth about death itself and how we think about it. Hardcore is a... Read All

Cheerful Ghost Roundtable: Ep 6 Controllers & Terraria Explo

In this smashing episode of The Cheerful Ghost Roundtable we talked about the new Steam Controller, Steam Machine Specs and the Terraria 1.2 update. We let our thoughts out of the bag on how we think the new Steam Controller will stack up with our gaming preferences and also talk about which of the three new Valve announcements we'd rather try first. Whiteboyslim & I then wash the rest of the episode down talking about the amazing new Terraria 1.2 update and our experiences with it pre-hardmode. Warning, it's pretty geek-tastic.

show notes

Terraria 1.2

Escape Goat: http://www.magicaltimebean.com/escape-goat/

Cheerful Ghost at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo: ... Read All

Timogorgon Member wrote on 10/10/2013 at 06:47pm

With special guest: My cat's butt.

AdamPFarnsworth wrote on 10/10/2013 at 10:42pm

You touched on the point I'm about to make in the discussion, but with the game consoles, I want to buy a game and have it look as great as possible (depending on the developer of course). If I buy an Xbox 360 game, I don't have to worry about choosing what graphics quality I want/can have. That's my main problem with computer games. I don't have to worry about upgrading my Xbox to play the newest game for it.

I did like your theoretical situation where one might use the steam machine to play lower CPU/GPU intensive games, and not have to worry about upgrading, but I don't know if that's a compelling enough reason to buy a console.

I am very interested in the new Steam Controller though!

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 10/11/2013 at 01:06am

Right, we will have to see what Valve does to address this. I am mostly interested to play some games from the living room without having to worry about anything. If I have to upgrade it every so often, thats not a huge deal.

Timogorgon Member wrote on 10/11/2013 at 01:21am

I think one of the biggest advantages that console gaming has over the PC market is that guarantee that a game you buy for your console will just work (well, after some updates usually). We'll see how Valve handles things like minimum requirements for certain games.

Azurephile Super Member wrote on 01/26/2014 at 03:21am

It's pretty cool hearing you guys talk about Terraria. I wasn't as excited about the new patch as you, only because I just started playing with the new release. It's still awesome and the more I hear about it, the more I want to get back into the game. Some of the drops you mentioned (like the Slime Staff), are new and unknown to me. I pretty much agree with you about containment of Corruption or Crimson, but I never found a reason to try to stop it, I just let it go and thought it was cool.

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Portland Retro Gaming Expo 2013

In what may be heralded by many to be the defining moment of the convention, Cheerful Ghost had a booth at this years Portland Retro Gaming Expo. The above image only captures a partial moment in what was a very fun filled weekend handing out stickers and talking about nerd things. We split the table with our awesome friends making Monster Ate My Birthday Cake and that really seemed to work out well. Many people stopped by to find out more about the site and play Monsters and we met a ton of cool Vendors too.

I want to give a special shout out to @scrypt for stopping by and helping out at the table. My most favorite moment of the Expo was when @scrypt and I were... Read All

PS4 Controller will work on PC for "basic functions"

This comes as good news. Shuhei Yoshida confirms the PS4 controller will work on PC for what he calls "basic functions." I assume this means the touchscreen won't work but things we're used to on controllers (like the buttons and sticks) will work.

No word yet on how this will appear to the OS, whether it will use Xinput, etc, but it's good to know there's some compatibility there. The PS3 controller doesn't work out of the box, and requires third-party software to use on PC.

The conversation about the controller compatibility can be found here: https://twitter.com/yosp/status/386257948487340032

No Half-Life 3 trademark after all

So you might remember my post from a few days ago about the Half-Life 3 trademark that had been filed. As it turns out, it was probably just a hoax. A believable one, but a hoax nonetheless.

The listing has been removed from the European trademark database. Nothing to see here, move along...

It just shows that you can't believe everything you read, even when it looks quite believable. Ah well, I still hold out some hope that we'll see this come sooner rather than later.

Valve shares Steam Machine prototype details

Valve is giving us a peek at what 300 lucky individuals will get their hands on during the Steam hardware beta. They're going for a balance of power, quietness, and not looking like a behemoth under your TV. The beta machines give a range of quality in CPU and GPU, but look at the RAM/Hard Drive space. That's quite nice. No pictures of the beta hardware yet, but they will share that soon.

Without further ado, the specs:

The 300 prototype units will ship with the following components:
GPU: some units with NVidia Titan, some GTX780, some GTX760, and some GTX660
CPU: some boxes with Intel i7-4770, some i5-4570, and some i3
RAM: 16GB DDR3-1600 (CPU), 3GB GDDR5 (GPU)
... Read All

Wizardry 6+7+8 Giveaway Winners!

The Wizardry giveaway is over, and we have ten lucky winners getting a copy of these awesome games! Winners are listed below. If you see your name on this list, check your private messages on the site-- you should have a key waiting for you.

Congrats to:

Hardeyez

wartinald

Jung_MY

Gleikara

gaidalcain85

Docwe_Weirdocz

Nhor

Marko_Krivokapic

Zabaton5

This contest was made possible by Night Dive Studios who made these games available on Steam. Be sure to give them some love:

https://www.facebook.com/NightDiveStudios
https://twitter.com/NightDiveStudio

Game/Show: Do Video Game Stereotypes Hurt Men?

"Are videogame stereotypes... hurting MEN?! There's been a lot of discussion about female portrayals in games (re: our last episode), but maybe we should be talking about dudes, too. Games continue the cultural narrative of big and strong men, "manning up" and being the hero."

After Game/Show's last episode about gaming and feminism they decided to follow it up with a segment about Men and gaming. As always, its a pretty nice showcase of the arguments. This show is a bit different in than it doesn't just stick to gaming entirely.

Great js13k game -- Radius Raid

http://js13kgames.com/games/radius-raid/__big.jpg

What's a js13k game you ask? Well it's a javascript game that is less that 13kb big... This one clocks in at 13,278 bytes.

It's a fun shooter reminiscent of asteroids with powerups and multiple enemy types.

So... Go... Play... now... :)

http://js13kgames.com/entries/radius-raid

and yes there are a bunch of other entries to the contest off this page http://js13kgames.com/entries

Rumor mill: Valve files trademark for Half-Life 3

Someone on NeoGAF found this trademark info earlier today. The site has gone down due to traffic overload, but someone caught the images before it went down.

http://imgur.com/a/FojoD#0

This isn't any kind of guarantee of Half-Life 3, but if they use every extension they are allowed to use, they have around 2.75 years to release something tangible.

I hope that, now that there's a ton of internet buzz about this, Valve will make some sort of an announcement soon, but it could still be a while before we know if this pans out.

Again, this is nothing more than a trademark, and I'm in no way saying HL3 is confirmed.