Happy Holidays and Merry Starcraft!

I picked up BioShock Infinite in the recently Steam Sale for $9.99 looking for a game to play over the holidays. Since the Steam version has a Mac port I installed it on my laptop and decided to cut into it the other night. First off the game is beautiful. Really, this game is one of the prettiest games I have seen in quite a long time. The amount of visual candy present in this game is astounding and the fact that it holds up is a testament to the games league of programmers.

Right now I am alternating between playing the game straight up on my laptop, plugging it into an external monitor and using HDMI to put it on a TV. I am also playing the game with a keyboard and a mouse as well as a USB controller and the game works well with both control schemes. I can bullseye things WAY better with the mouse but I prefer playing the game with a controller.

I don't want to write about the games story because some of you haven't played it, I don't want to spoil anything for you. That said, I want to talk some about the games themes. The game deals with racism and classism in a way few games do and I think this is worth noting because the game isn't ham fisted when it does it. I found the games version of altered America and Columbia to be quite sad and can't help but consider how the United States turned out. I think the game asks some questions about societies in general in terms of treatment of certain classes I found very interesting. Columbia is a beautiful and bright shining beacon of American exceptionalism with an ugly core of hatred and racism.

So far the game seems to be more heavily geared to the art, story and overall tone than the shooter part of the game. Personally I totally dig the games pacing and find that I am having a great time simply walking through the game and experiencing the world of Columbia. That said, the action is starting to ramp up and have found it all to be quite fun and enjoyable.

Like I said earlier, I think I am a little under halfway and have really enjoyed myself so far. I hope BioShock Infinite comes to SteamOS because i'd love to play this on my Steam Machine. I know I am __VERY__ late to the BioShock Infinite bandwagon, but am happy with the game and if you haven't picked it up, I recommend you do.

"We've assembled a collection of the BIGGEST IDEAS in gaming of 2013! Yes, there are numbers, but we swear, it's totally not a list. From voice activated control to consoles, from ASCII to narratives, see what was on our list, and then complain about all the things we forgot about!"

This is a good episode of Game/Show to end out the year with. Discussing some of the bigger ideas of the year, some of which I am happy to see take shape. I think the games as vehicles for social change is something I am very interested in personally. I wouldn't have expected when I first saw Super Mario Brothers that video games could get as far as they are now. It's a great time to be alive and paying attention.

"The Lanius are scavengers – metallic lifeforms that rely on the absorption of minerals to sustain themselves. Their society ebbs and flows in hibernation cycles; they may lie dormant for many years, even while hurtling through space. As soon as they become aware of significant metal deposits they reawaken. Usually this occurs in the dying stages of a galactic civilization or in the wake of intergalactic war.

Reports of reawakened Lanius have appeared in many of the war-torn and abandoned sectors of Federation Space. Their arrival has created panic as they indiscriminately seek our sources of metal – although more diplomatic individuals have suggested that they can be reasoned with."

More details came out today about the FTL update in the form of a new race of creatures, the Lanius. I really don't want to meet up with them as they only seem to be hostile and seem to be pretty menacing. I wonder if they are enemy only or if you could get a Lanius on your ship? They seem to naturally destroy the ship so... perhaps not.

The FTL developers let us know some rather large details about the update:

• It will contain a ton of new content and improvements: although the larger additions can be disabled if you prefer FTL “vanilla.”


• This large update is free for those who already own the game on Windows, Mac, or Linux.


• FTL is also coming to iPad; it will be the full version of the game including the new “Advanced Edition” content.


• FTL on iPad will have to be purchased separately from the PC version.


• An exact date for release has not been decided but we are aiming for early 2014.

I really appreciate the "FTL vanilla" setting. Some of the new content will change the game very much and it might be nice to return to basic FTL if one would want. For newer players it might also be nice to see what the game was before the Advanced Edition as well.

I am seriously considering picking FTL up on the iPad as well, something about it seems like a great idea. Anyone else with me on this?

http://www.ftlgame.com/?p=621

If you haven't seen it already, you need to watch the announcement trailer:

http://vimeo.com/79104930

This is our last episode of the Cheerful Ghost Roundtable in 2013. We talk about what we've been playing, the recent Starbound beta, SteamOS and Steam Machines beta launch, our top 3 most played games in 2013. We also ask Baby New Year to grant us some wishes when we look forward to 2014 in gaming.

Also, WhiteboySlim shows off his holiday sweater and I get a bit upset when I hear Steam Machine beta recipients are installing Windows..... Barbarians.

• Papers, Please: http://store.steampowered.com/app/239030/


• Starbound beta: http://cheerfulghost.com/Travis/posts/1784


• SteamOS: http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/posts/1782


• Terraria 1.2: http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/posts/1674


• BioShock Infinite: http://cheerfulghost.com/Travis/posts/1156


• Master of Orion 2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Orion_II:_Battle_at_Antares


• Monaco: http://store.steampowered.com/app/113020/


• Stardrew Valley: http://cheerfulghost.com/game/24035

I want to thank you for watching The Cheerful Ghost Roundtable and will see you for season 2. If you are new to the show or want to go back and binge watch the entire first season, please do:

http://cheerfulghost.com/roundtable

Tomorrow is the day for the Steam Holiday Sale. Any games you are looking to pickup?

I still have yet to play BioShock Infinite & Dishonored but I have so many games already!

Join the CG event for the discussion:

http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/events/44

You can read a bit of our discussion on SteamOS:

http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/posts/1782

When Neverwinter Nights for PC released in 2002 I was really excited because I heard lots of great things about it. I bought it second hand off a friend and dug into the main story. Neverwinter Nights was a little long, but it offered a rich story that I found really interesting. By the end of the game I had a really epic Cleric that could kill nearly anything with a few spells. I enjoyed the Shadows of Undrentide expansion and really loved Hordes of the Underdark.

Recently watched the above Neverwinter Lore video and though it was worth sharing. You can play the Neverwinter MMO on Steam now or the entire 2002 Diamond Edition on GOG.com for $5.

http://www.gog.com/game/neverwinter_nights_diamond_edition
http://store.steampowered.com/app/109600/

SteamOS shipped last night and after it hit the net many people started analyzing it and trying to figure out more of the technical details. Valve has a really great SteamOS FAQ that outlines many of the details you should be aware of and i'll summarize some of the important ones.

• SteamOS is based on Debian GNU/Linux Wheezy using some Valve custom bits. Valve has added a nice mechanism to load games from SteamOS, its own packaging of graphic drivers and a customization to have the console auto-update.


• SteamOS seems to be require 64 bit processors.


• SteamOS contains a setting to drop out of Steam to the Gnome 3 Desktop. Gnome 3 is a full featured Linux desktop you can learn more about here: http://www.gnome.org/gnome-3/


• Valve has enabled easy access to gain root access on SteamOS. Basically this means you can customize it to do anything Linux can do.


• Right now SteamOS targets NVidia only, but there are drivers included for Intel and ATI.

I have been involved with Linux for many years and Valve's choices on what to ship with SteamOS are very exciting. Basing SteamOS on Debian Linux is a brilliant choice as it allows some awesome customization options for opening up your SteamOS to do nearly anything. I will be keeping my eye to how things advance to see guides on adding extra package repositories to SteamOS so you can setup your Steam Machine to run XBMC, VLC or act as a file server.

I have a mac-mini under my TV so I can watch web video and use VLC to play any movie file I throw at it. Now that SteamOS is basically a customized version of Debian, I can replace the mac. In a world where Sony can ship a console without mp3 playback or support for DLNA/UPnP, SteamOS will ship something you can hack to do practically anything you'd want a computer to do.

Valve shipped out the initial 300 Steam Machine beta machines and so far we are waiting for people to obtain them and report back. A few people in the beta are YouTuber's and I will let you know when they start talking about stuff.

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamuniverse/discussions/1/648814395741989999/

If you want to download the backgrounds SteamOS ships with, you can download them here. I set the main one as my Linux desktop background, you know, for science.

http://repo.steampowered.com/steamos/pool/main/v/valve-wallpapers/

As an aside, I have been running Debian Wheezy for a few weeks as I recently switched from being a long time Ubuntu user. It's a great distro and at some point in 2014, I am looking to switch my primary Linux Desktop to SteamOS.

I have tons of digital files I have amassed over the years. I have 155 gigs of music I have acquired from ripping CD's, buying it online or getting stuff people release for free. I also collect PDF books, games, movies, digital pictures and a ton of other stuff I never want to lose. I take pride in that the majority of my digital collection is legit stuff I actually own. For many years I have been happy with how I access my stuff because I typically used to operate on only one computer. Everything lived in one place and life was great. That said, after University I started acquiring more devices and then managing all my files got a bit harder.

After I added a few more computers to the mix, I started treating one computer as the "canonical point" for all files and then I used various scripts to keep everything in sync over my network. A few years ago I picked up an iPhone and things started to get a bit hard to manage. It wasn't impossible, it just was tedious. I'd buy a new album, rip it, copy it to my Linux machine then sync it to my laptop and other computers. Then use iTunes to copy it to my phone. It was manageable but not fun.

A few months ago I decided to bite the bullet and look into buying something I have wanted for a few years now. I got a NAS. NAS stands for Network Attached Storage and it's basically a hard disk you plug into your network that can serve up your files. After doing quite a bit of research I bought the 3TB Western Digital WDMyCloud.

First off, the WDMyCloud is awesome. At 3TB, I have more than enough disk to store my files. Once your music, movies and photos are on the device the MyCloud scans your files and serves them up over Windows & Apple filesharing + DLNA & UPnP. DLNA/UPnP are protocols many devices like the XBox 360 & PS3 can stream media over. Right now, I can browse through all my music and movies from the MyCloud on my PS3. Western Digital also has an app for the iPhone but you can use any generic DLNA/UPnP app as well.

One of the neat things about the MyCloud is that it lets you enable ssh by simply checking a box in the admin UI. Most devices don't allow this and to get ssh access you need to flash the device or hack it. The MyCloud lets you unlock it by default and it's pretty awesome as under the covers it runs Debian Wheezy(Linux). I have used this ssh access to turn the MyCloud into a local Linux server.

If you are looking for a way to consolidate your media for easy access, I recommend you check out the WDMyCloud. So far, I love using it and it has made sharing my files on my home network really simple.

http://is.gd/AAoHuM

War might not ever change, but sometimes the price of games change so much you must pick them up. GOG.com is launching its holiday sale with a bang and is releasing Fallout, Fallout 2 and Fallout Tactics free for a limited time.

Nab the games quick as your change to pick them up dries up in one day.

http://www.gog.com/promo/fallout_series_giveaway_winter_promo_2013

Where you are there, checkout the other awesome holiday sales on GOG.com games. Tis the season to spend like the end of the world is near.