jdodson | Cheerful Ghost

Leaving for PAX Prime in Seattle Tomorrow!

Leaving for PAX Prime in Seattle tomorrow. Reading over the presentations and noting which ones I want to attend:

"Story Time with Ted Price"
"Chiptunes"
"The Double Fine Adventure Adventure"
"Assassin's Creed III PAX Prime Panel"
"Epic Games Presents: Fortnight Reveal"
"Behind the music of blockbuster video games"
"After notch the new minecraft team"
"Which Interactive Lie Did I Tell: A conversation on game writing with Chet & Erik of Valve Software"

I plan on hitting up others but these were the ones that stood out to me.

According to Bethesda Doom 3 BFG Edition will be playable as well as Departed. Gearbox will be showing Borderlands 2 as well so I will have much to write about in the next few days.

Stay rad.

AdamPFarnsworth wrote on 08/30/2012 at 12:21am

Looking forward to hearing your reporting!

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 08/30/2012 at 01:06am

I am too :D

Travis Admin wrote on 08/30/2012 at 02:43am

Request: You must play Departed and report back! :)

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 08/30/2012 at 02:50am

I will do that. Pictures will be included. If I remember to take them.

:)

Tungsten wrote on 08/30/2012 at 11:21pm

Hey, if you see a game called "Ironclad tactics“ would you mind checking it out? It's made by my favorite Indy dev.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 08/31/2012 at 03:45am

I will. Noted to check out.

If you want to join this conversation you need to sign in.

After completing a ton of quests in Whiterun I decided to

After completing a ton of quests in Whiterun I decided to pick up the main quest and make my way to the place to meet up with the Greybeards in the mountains. From Whiterun to the destination it looked pretty close but as I made the journey I realized how far things in Skyrim can be. The journey took me over grasslands, rivers a bridge and to a town at the summit of the 7,000 steps. The 7,000 steps leading to the area the Greybeards inhabit.

Ivarstead is the town at the mountain summit and I talked to a few people and rested up at the Inn. There were a few town quests, one being to check out a haunted shack at the edge of town that I haven't started yet. Hanging out in these small towns is fun, nice to see every town in Skyrim isn't "Whiterun sized." I picked up a quest from a NPC on a bridge to take a sack of food to the top of the mountain for the Greybeards. He said the only stuff he encountered on his trip up were the occasional wolf or rabbit. Yeah, that was pretty misleading as I had a few sizable foes to kill on the way. One Frost Troll killed me 5 times before I put it down. Apparently many players had problems killing that one too from a few Google Searches on the topic.

Summiting the mountain was fun. Its was cool to see the weather change and read the text of the stones on the way to the top. After I hit the steps I snapped the above image and saved. I want to enter High Hrothgar in a later session.

The Portal 2 Perpetual Testing Initiative is a really fun

The Portal 2 Perpetual Testing Initiative is a really fun map editor and sharing platform. Making maps and sharing them with friends really brought me back to my early map making days with Wolfenstein, Doom, Warcraft 2 and Starcraft. Looks like Valve is taking the Perpetual Testing Initiative one step further and allowing people the ability to make co-op maps!

A snip from the Valve blog post:

"That's right: Puzzle creators can now design and publish co-op maps, which puzzle players can now greedily consume. Well, as long as they have a co-op partner. Which the 75% off coupon should help them (i.e.: you) find. We've also added a "Quick Play" feature that creates never-ending, auto-generated playlists of the top-rated maps in a variety of categories. It has literally never been easier to figuratively jump in and literally play some Portal"

http://www.thinkwithportals.com/blog.php?id=8663&p=1

Not much to share because PopCap hasnt shared much with us

Not much to share because PopCap hasn't shared much with us yet... That said, Plants VS Zombies 2 has been confirmed by PopCap for release for Spring of 2013.

http://beefjack.com/news/plants-vs-zombies-2-coming-spring-2013/

Hoping it comes with difficulty modes or something that makes it harder for multiple replays!

Hear ye, Hear ye, Today we announce the Cheerful Ghost

Hear ye, Hear ye,

Today we announce the Cheerful Ghost Borderlands 2 Haiku Contest

To celebrate the upcoming Borderlands 2 launch on September 18th, Cheerful Ghost is having a Borderlands 2 Haiku Contest. You have two chances to win a copy of Borderlands 2 on Steam and the details are as follows:

We are giving away one copy of Borderlands 2 on the Steam Gifts site here: http://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/RaQNV/borderlands-2 One lucky winner will be selected at random to win on Steam Gifts site.

We are also going to be giving away a second copy of Borderlands 2 to the Cheerful Ghost user that creates the coolest Borderlands 2 Haiku. The winner will be determined by which Haiku gets the most “+1” comments from other users. To post your Haiku for consideration, add Borderlands 2 to your game list and post your Haiku with Borderlands 2 as the game category for your post.

Feel free to share your Haiku post over Twitter, Facebook and Google+ to allow your friends and family the ability to vote for you. Due to practical considerations, only “+1” comment votes count that are posted directly to the Cheerful Ghost site.

Each person may only vote once. If you vote multiple times, we will disregard each vote over the first one we count.

Each Cheerful Ghost user can only submit one Haiku to be considered.

Please format your Haiku appropriately, for more information on that see the always amazing Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku

Deadline for Haiku Contest entries and votes are September 15th @ 4PM EST!

If you have any questions on the contest, feel free to ask in the comments below.

Rudyard_Stone wrote on 08/29/2012 at 07:24am

This is a Haiku
It's about Borderlands 2
I hope I win it

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 08/29/2012 at 03:09pm

Thanks for the submission Rudyard.

If you want this one to be considered for the contest, it will need to exist in its own Borderlands 2 post so people can vote on it.

It would be too hard to parse out whom votes for what in a comment thread with different Haikus.

Thanks again!

Sebastian wrote on 08/29/2012 at 08:03pm

Borderlands was sweet
Now I want to play the next
How will I do it?

Well I heard of sites
Mainly Cheerful Ghost dot com
I might win this award

First is a contest
This haiku is my entry
I really hope I win

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 08/30/2012 at 12:01am

Hi Sebastian.

Thanks for the comment. If you want any of those to be in the contest, they should be a proper Borderlands 2 post so people can comment on them.

Thanks!

Axel_Mller wrote on 09/05/2012 at 10:49am

Will you be checking the Haikus authenticity at the end of the contest to see if they follow the 5-7-5 pattern?

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 09/05/2012 at 11:41am

Yes, we will.

Axel_Mller wrote on 09/05/2012 at 12:48pm

Oh. I'm glad to hear that. I made sure to proof-read mine several times.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 09/05/2012 at 02:21pm

Actually I'll confer with @panickedthumb about that. Let you know.

Axel_Mller wrote on 09/05/2012 at 03:11pm

Thanks!

TonyJapMayo wrote on 09/14/2012 at 10:59pm

Hi, So do we get the winner based on the votes?

If yes, cant people just make fake accounts to +1 etc?

Thank =)

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 09/14/2012 at 11:00pm

They could but it doesn't seem like that's the majority of people voting.

The next contest will be different :D

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 09/14/2012 at 11:01pm

And yes, winner is based on votes.

Axel_Mller wrote on 09/14/2012 at 11:05pm

I've been trying hard on this. I hope it ends up well.

TonyJapMayo wrote on 09/14/2012 at 11:05pm

Oooh, temptation >< haha.. nah, I'll play fair.. I love Japan n Haiku is Japanese ><

Btw, I hope your vote = 20 votes =P haha.. Thanks for the chance jdodson =)

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 09/14/2012 at 11:09pm

No problem.

Bryden_Gee wrote on 09/15/2012 at 06:22pm

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
I Have A Gun Get In The Car

Axel_Mller wrote on 09/15/2012 at 06:23pm

Do you wanna play,
The rape game? No!
That's the spirit...

Tsunami wrote on 09/15/2012 at 08:01pm

Rise and shine brave men!
The whole world is up and down!
Free your mind!Go Fight!

If you want to join this conversation you need to sign in.

Gearbox recently released a stripped down retro version of

Gearbox recently released a stripped down retro version of Borderlands 2 you can play in your browser. You can choose from one of the 4 new Borderlands 2 characters and fight hordes of enemies in an area 2d shooter. From the handful of games I played, I chose Salvador and made it to level 16. There is a fair amount of gun types to choose from but I seemed to prefer the machine guns to the others. Shotguns seemed to be a bit underpowered as the intial blast is strong but they took too long to reload.

Its a fun game to try out in anticipation for Borderlands 2 launch this September 18thand you can play it here: http://www.wubwub.eu/demake.php

If you strip the "/demake.php" off the end of that domain, it looks like there are a few more things that will become available as time marches onward to the Borderlands 2 launch. Should be interesting. More as it develops.

This just in from the rumor department, Fallout 4 has been

This just in from the rumor department, Fallout 4 has been recently discussed on Reddit and a few other game sites. According to one anonymous Redditor, Bethesda has been poking around MIT for the upcoming Fallout 4. The Redditor in question is an anonymous MIT employee with insider knowledge of Bethesda scouting locations for the game.

I loved Fallout 3 and news of Fallout 4 is very cool. What do you think, does Fallout 4 set in Boston interest you? Are you ready to head back into the Fallout world and kill more Super Mutants and Enclave?

-

http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/yexpi/fallout_4_will_take_place_in_boston/
http://attackofthefanboy.com/rumors/fallout-4-headed-boston-rumors-mit/

Tungsten wrote on 08/26/2012 at 03:21am

Only if they ditched the engine. As much as I loved Skyrim/Fallout3/Oblivion, I'm getting sick of it. They all just seem like expansion packs rather than full games, despite the hundreds and hundreds of hours of content.

Travis Admin wrote on 08/26/2012 at 12:49pm

There's no way they'll ditch the Skyrim engine until they've got at least one Fallout with it. They've been using the same engine for years, just heavily modifying it. I don't see that changing any time soon.

Travis Admin wrote on 08/26/2012 at 01:13pm

I think Skyrim's engine is different enough. Fallout 3 definitely felt like a prettier Oblivion engine, but Skyrim's feels singificantly different enough, while still being familiar.

Tungsten wrote on 08/26/2012 at 02:00pm

It just seems like a facelift to me. They removed the "zoom in on faces while talking" and retweaked the menus. It still has the same glitches and limitations. I'm sick of standing in a room where I can't even pretend to look out a window, or where people come in and out by materializing at the door. I'm sick of the physics glitches, of people talking to me through walls, of the same canned animations.

Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed those games, but if half-life 3 comes out on the Source Engine (even the extremely updated version from Portal) I'm going to be disappointed. Same deal here.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 08/26/2012 at 05:50pm

Tungtsten: Good point. I haven't given that as much thought as you but ... yeah I mean they do look like similar games.

I started with Fallout 3. I played a bit of oblivion and it was fun, but I stopped dead at a particular Oblivion gate I couldn't figure out. Then I came back to my game and stopped because I became a Vampire accidentally and started getting hurt in Sunlight.

That said, my first all in experience with a Bethesda game was Fallout 3 and I loved the game. I guess love isn't a good enough word really, I LOVED the game. I didn't really think of the game engine as the world, the textures and stuff was very different to me.

As I now play Skyrim, yeah you know the slow motion kill shots do remind me of Fallout 3. The play style kind of reminds me of it too. The voice actors are similar, the style is similar so its more noticeable to me now. Its not bad, but yeah, its familiar.

Will a new game with the engine, similar voice actors and style in the Fallout verse bother me? I imagine not. I mean, I have Fallout: New Vegas waiting for me to start up and I imagine ill love it, but I might put another game in the middle first.

I hear you though, seems like you played more of the Bethesda games than I and yeah, all told if they took a departure with the next game more that could be a great thing.

That said, like panickedthumb I doubt they will drop the engine and such. I do hope they clean it up bugs and strange elements. Then again, its fun to have Mammoths fall from the sky but it does sort of break the immersion.

If you want to join this conversation you need to sign in.

My Continuing Adventures As The Dragonborn

As I continue my adventures as the Dragonborn, the things I can do in Skyrim become more and more epic. Somehow I missed that Bethesda released a free DLC update to Skyrim that adds high res textures to the game. I knew community members had high res packs but finding out about Bethesda's drew me to the immediate download and install.

After starting the game after the DLC was installed I noticed right away, the game looks even more incredible. It shows the game was "mastered" with consoles in mind and the high res. textures really make the game feel more organic. The swords and game environments seem less pixelated and edgy. Plus with lighting turned up, the game has a softer glow to it in certain conditions that are really quite beautiful. That said, all this beauty comes with a cost. Things are a bit slower on my rig. Its well within the realm of acceptable but it is still present. I imagine when I get a new video card it will be less pronounced.

I finally saved up the 5k gold for my house in Whiterun. There is nothing in the house save cobwebs and boxes so I am stashing items inside it by simply dropping them on the ground. That seems to work between saves so ill do that until I can find a way to put a chest inside. Does anyone know you can get a chest in your house to stash items in?

I was also presented with the opportunity(not saying how for a possible spoiler) to become a Werewolf. I don't mind the idea, but it seems you lose a few "human" benefits and I am not sure being a Werewolf is worth it. It seem you gain the ability to become a Werewolf but on the flipside in Werewolf form you can't collect items or anything. Plus in human form you lose your sleep bonus. Also it seems if you change into a Werewolf around a human they immediately want to kill your human form too. Has anyone done this and would you say this is a good idea?

High Res. Texture Pack:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/202485/

A fun epic Skyrim 300 video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ct1668FUKs&feature=player_embedded

Travis Admin wrote on 08/23/2012 at 01:55am

You can talk to the steward or something, can't remember his title, to upgrade your house. I think there's a chest upstairs by default though.

As for werewolfing yourself, I never cared for the benefits. It's a fun novelty at first but I never used it after a few times.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 08/23/2012 at 02:38am

Ok. I can't seem to progress with the faction that can turne until I decide I want to. Wondering if in should take the jump for that story line alone.

AdamPFarnsworth wrote on 08/23/2012 at 05:47pm

I never found being a werewolf beneficial, other than ocassionally when I needed to run somewhere quickly (and didn't have a horse), or just maul a town. But I also didn't find the negatives to be a handicap.

It was an interesting storyline.

Travis Admin wrote on 08/23/2012 at 05:54pm

You can get through that quest line pretty quickly and then there is a way out.

Travis Admin wrote on 08/23/2012 at 05:55pm

And if you get Dawnguard, there's a way back in!

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 08/24/2012 at 02:50pm

Cool. Sounds like there isn't too much of a negative to being a Werewolf then.

Travis Admin wrote on 08/24/2012 at 06:58pm

Yeah, you don't get your sleep bonus on skillups, and people will tell you that you smell like a wet dog. That's about it.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 08/24/2012 at 11:18pm

Hahaha, totally worth it. Wondering. Can you be a WW any other way?

AdamPFarnsworth wrote on 08/25/2012 at 04:02am

Not that I'm aware of.

Travis Admin wrote on 08/25/2012 at 04:30am

There's one sidequest where you can get an item that helps control when you can turn. I won't give any more info in case you want to avoid spoilers but you can search for it on the wikis if you are so inclined.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 08/25/2012 at 02:19pm

Will do, thanks!

So you can't control when you turn the to start?

Travis Admin wrote on 08/25/2012 at 02:47pm

You can control it but you only get one per day. The item changes that.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 08/25/2012 at 03:18pm

Oh sweet thanks. Good thing you don't switch on a full moon in town automagically.

Travis Admin wrote on 08/25/2012 at 04:11pm

Actually I think that coul be interesting. If they gave you more benefits to being a werewolf but one big drawback, like turning automatically on a full moon.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 08/26/2012 at 01:26am

Right. That would be.

If you want to join this conversation you need to sign in.

Looks like Nintendo Power is going to be closing up shop.

Looks like Nintendo Power is going to be closing up shop. It had a fantastic run in the late 80's and early 90's and whomever had a subscription I was always envious of. I read each issue cover to cover many times.

I remember reading the issue with Secret of Mana detailed and I couldn't put it down for weeks. The way Nintendo stiched together images and game hints was magical to my young video game addicted brain.

A few years ago I got a subscription to Nintendo Power again and some of the spark remained but my habits changed and I didn't read them as eagerly as I once did. Oh and they talked about Nintendogs too much for my tastes. I should have kept my original issues of Nintendo Power but like so many, I tossed them out.

I DO have 2009's special 25th anniversary issue with the special silver cover and poster. I also have a somewhat tattered copy of the Super Mario 3 guide as well as the Final Fantasy VII guide. That said a few site online have archived all the old issues to obtain. Hopefully Nintendo issues an app that has them all available or puts them on some kind of web archive.

I salute you Nintendo Power an amazing relic of a era long since gone!

Oh and the top Nintendo Games in 1988 for Nintendo Powers First issue:
http://i.imgur.com/VHY0c.jpg

-
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/08/source-nintendo-power-magazine-to-cease-publication/

What better way to celebrate Retro Tuesday that with a Super

What better way to celebrate Retro Tuesday that with a Super Mario Brothers post it note video? Well, perhaps Shigeru Miyamoto visiting your house and telling you they are making another Zelda game in the style of Link to the Past and releasing the source code for the original Zelda as open source.

One can dream can't he?

jdodson1

2759 Posts

Leaving for PAX Prime in Seattle Tomorrow!

After completing a ton of quests in Whiterun I decided to

The Portal 2 Perpetual Testing Initiative is a really fun

Not much to share because PopCap hasnt shared much with us

Hear ye, Hear ye, Today we announce the Cheerful Ghost

Gearbox recently released a stripped down retro version of

This just in from the rumor department, Fallout 4 has been

My Continuing Adventures As The Dragonborn

Looks like Nintendo Power is going to be closing up shop.

What better way to celebrate Retro Tuesday that with a Super