jdodson | Cheerful Ghost

Valve Releases First Look at the New Steam Controller

"Here's a quick look at some games being played with the prototype version of the Steam Controller -- the same version that we'll be shipping to 300 Steam users later this year. We'll post more demonstrations like this soon, including footage of some other game developers using the controller to play their own games."

In this awesome new video Valve shows off the new Steam Controller with Portal 2, Civilization 5, Counterstrike Go and Papers Please. The control of the games looks fluid and I like the varied nature of the games they are showing. The controller is pretty rough and is missing the middle display button, but it already seems very functional. In the video they mention that more of these videos will come out and they are wondering what games people would like to see played in the next video.

What kind of gameplay would you like to see on the next Steam Controller video? I am thinking Half-life 3, but you know that might not happen.

Portal: Survive! Cool New Portal Fan Film Short

Portal: Survive is a interesting fan film short showcasing Portal and Lab Rat the Portal comic that ties Portal and Portal 2 together. The video contains a bit more Aperture Science lore with GlaDOS and the "neurotoxin accident" that cleared the facility.

This is one of the better fan video game films and I recommend you watch it. There was another Portal fan movie created back in 2011 called Portal: No Escape. Both are quite good and worthy of a watch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4drucg1A6Xk

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 more thrilling mode for certain, the permanence of death being front and center.

Games like FTL and Legend of Dungeon put permadeath front and center but it took my mind a bit of coaxing to get to a point where losing everything could be fun. That said, I couldn't imagine playing those games any other way now.

Do you often play hardcore to increase games thrill factor?

Escape Goat: Escape The Dungeon One Sheep At A Time

Escape Goat is an awesome new retro puzzle platformer by Magical Time Bean. The Goat was mysteriously imprisoned for Witchcraft in the prison and you must escape. Along the way you can find a mouse companion to help you get to hard to reach places as well as drop on switches to open doors. The mouse can also get a magic hat that you can use to switch locations with, allowing you to get to places that you can't jump to(best shown in Let's Play video above I made).

If you are looking for a great new platformer that has a unique flavor, Escape Goat is something you must check out. And it's not a bad time to do that because its only $3.99 on Steam & $4.99 on GOG right now.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/251370/
http://www.gog.com/game/escape_goat

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: http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/posts/1663

Digital Soaps: http://cleangeeks.com

8-bit Metroid by Pixel Art Paradise

New Steam Controller: http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamController/

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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Monsters Ate My Pumpkin Carving

Let's say you were going to carve a pumpkin for Halloween this year. And just for good measure, you wanted to have a more "video gamey" feel to things. Maybe you want to carve out some characters from an awesome upcoming new Indie title from our friends making Monsters Ate My Birthday Cake? As it turns out, today is your lucky day to nab and print these great pumpkin carving stencils.

If you make a carving from one of these, drop the image in the comments!

The above stencil is Grognar, if you are thinking of going a bit more "Bat styley" you can check out Eek's stencil.

http://i.imgur.com/bypDmDF.jpg

A Piece of History: The Legend of Zelda Manual

https://alastaira.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/image7.png

Take a peek at a capture of a segment from the original Legend of Zelda Manual. This was one of the first open world games I played and it blew my mind with its awesomeness. Hoping the new Zelda game Link Between Worlds really brings back some of the old magic these early games had.

First Five Minutes of BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea

"Come back to Rapture in a story that finds Booker and Elizabeth on the eve of the underwater city's fall from grace.
Get a taste of Rapture in its full glory, almost entirely built from scratch in the BioShock Infinite engine."

2K just dropped a 5 minute game-play video for part one of Burial At Sea, a upcoming DLC pack for BioShock infinite. Looks like a very pretty return to Rapture. The video really shows off the world building and I wanted them to spend more time just looking at things and listening to peoples conversations. I wonder how much of Rapture you will get to experience before it falls into chaos? That said, VERY excited to play this.

Anyone interested in picking this up?

http://www.bioshockinfinite.com/burial-at-sea-ep1

Halfway: A Indie 2D Top Down X-Com Strategy Game

"Halfway is a turn-based strategy game taking place a few hundred years in the future. You take control of a small group of people who are witnesses to a violent overtake of their spaceship by an unknown species. As you fight your way through the dark corridors and rooms of the ship, you will uncover more and more details of what has taken place."

Halfway is an upcoming game recently announced by its creators, Robotality. From the released game play footage and announcement this game looks like a really interesting indie answer to the classic X-Com turn based tactical strategy game genre. The game looks very playable in its early form and I am really interested in watching this project unfold.

They answer a few questions about the game in a recent blog post:

Does Halfway have procedural content?

"Yes and no. What we don’t have is procedurally generated levels. Instead we have hand-crafted levels. As mentioned in last week’s post, we strongly feel this is the way to go for our game. With Halfway, we don’t just want to send the player through a series of randomly occurring battles, but deliver an engaging story with it. This is quite difficult to do with completely procedural content. We hope you will agree when you actually get to play the game."

What about Squad customization?

"In Halfway your squad members don’t have fixed classes. Instead each squad member is made up of a tactical skills tree and some positive and negative perks. Some characters will share certain skills and specialization's. When a member has gained enough experience the player will be able to choose from skills and perks to customize their team."

BBBBBBuut what about console support? Well it seems the Halfway team has your back...

"One of the aspects we’ve always wanted to make sure is that our games come with good modding support. When we started working on Halfway, we knew that it’ll be something we want to plan for from the beginning.

Halfway is coming out later this year, and we will shortly thereafter release an entire toolchain that will allow anyone to build their own levels and campaigns for the game."

Awesome 2D pixel themed tactical strategy game coming out on Mac, Windows, Linux with modding support built in? Uh yeah, that sounds awesome.

*achievement unlocked: on my radar*

http://robotality.com/blog/

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 handing out stickers. A woman cosplaying as Elizabeth from BioShock Infinite walked by and I yelled "Elizabeth, Elizabeth, do you want a sticker?" She took one and then @scrypt noted how awesome her costume was and how neat the game was. She then responded with "but what game" and we both wondered about that for a minute. As she walked away she started "the Elizabeth" dance and at that moment I was in awe at how great people that love video games can be. It was a really touching moment and "made" the Expo for me.

The split-booth from a distance: http://i.imgur.com/X8AVgdk.jpg

Someone playing Monsters Ate My Birthday Cake on iPad: http://i.imgur.com/R4k3hGV.jpg

scrypt Supporter wrote on 10/08/2013 at 03:28am

Good times, indeed! It was a lot of fun getting to meet the local community, and be able to promote the site. I don't know... I think I liked it more than PAX, especially in size. There weren't more than a handful of game developers there with booths, but even then, the games they were showing were really interesting. One in particular was a turn-based combat game that used the power of math as a summoning pool! Now that I'm settled back into Vancouver, i should be posting more frequently, starting with attention going to the local scene. Stay tuned!

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 10/08/2013 at 04:27am

I agree, PRGE was more fun than PAX for me too. Less people and stuff means you can focus more on what is actually present and most of it was really great.

Travis Admin wrote on 10/10/2013 at 06:09pm

So where can I get a bottle of Cheerful Ghost hand sanitizer?

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 10/11/2013 at 01:04am

Hahaha, just buy one and apply sticker.

INSTANT BRANDING!

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 10/11/2013 at 01:46am

Interesting PRGE video from Gamester81 http://blip.tv/gamester81/portland-retro-gaming-expo-recap-6658829