Cheerful Ghost: An Awesome Community For Gamers

Anúna Choir Perform Diablo 3 Soundtrack

"In July 2012 at Dublin's National Concert Hall, Anúna performed two pieces, "Black Soulstone" and "Incantation" written by US composer Russell Brower from the soundtrack Diablo III. Soloists are Lucy Champion, Miriam Blennerhassett, Rory Musgrave and Michael McGlynn."

This is a very good performance version of Russel Browder's great soundtrack. The Diablo 3 Soundtrack tops my list of great video game soundtracks to come out over the last few years and this choir sings these songs well.

It takes a bit to get started so skip ahead 35 seconds if you so desire.

One Seriously Under Appreciated King pt. 1

Since I have some time this holiday I decided to do a few Let's Play videos to share with you all. One game that tops my list of sweet Super Nintendo Games I feel needs WAY more attention than it does is King Arthurs World. King Arthurs World is a lemmings clone that takes the formula and creates a great war strategy game for the console. The game is so well done I am somewhat surprised this war game formula wasn't copied and recycled.

I make my way through 7 of the training missions and get back into the groove. The fun and creativity of this game shines through and I had a blast playing it. I will continue to do Let's Plays of this game and will do each one of only... Read All

Let's Play: Steam Big Picture Mode

With all the Steam on Linux news Valve is pushing pretty hard into to break into your living room. I know most of us have heard of the new Steam Big Picture Mode but we might not have all seen it in action. Recently it showed up on my Mac Steam client so I took a few minutes to make a video showing off what it looks like.

Overall, Steam Big Picture Mode is beautifully usable. Its so well designed for a first effort it really showcases the huge difference between Valve and the traditional console makers: Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony. Sony just pushed a pretty large update to the Sony Online Marketplace and its better, but doesn't come close to the first version of... Read All

Even Cheaper Games

Just wanted to let yall know about a few great deals happening in video games this Thanksgiving holiday and the blackest Friday of the year. If you have anything to add, post it in the comments and ill keep this post updated with the goods as I find new ones.

Starcraft 2 digital is marked down to $20 on battle.net: http://us.blizzard.com/store/details.xml?id=1100001122

Diablo 3 digital is $40 marked down from $60: http://us.blizzard.com/store/details.xml?id=1100002016

Inflatable Personality Cores over at Think Geek. Not really on sale, but pretty awesome at $20. http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/f128/

The Steam Autumn Sale is in effect. Check back every so often for new... Read All

Portal 2 PC Gets Splitscreen in Big Picture

Recently an update to Portal 2 included these updates:

Big Picture Support
- Added 2 controller splitscreen support for Standard Co-Op. Press X on the second controller inside the first Co-op menu to activate it.
- Fixed controller's ‘quick ping’ button causing the player’s movement to stop.
- Fixed not being able to exit Robot Enrichment or Create Test Chambers menus with the controller.

This is awesome news for people wanting to run Steam in the living room as adding the same console features to the PC version helps this. Recently Big Picture mode came to my Steam and my first thoughts of it were good. Over the next few days I plan on doing a bender of Lets Plays,... Read All

New Episode of Game Shop: "Pokemon is for Babies"

The episode sort of ups the writing ante and the results are good. I am one of those gamers that doesn't ingest every shooter that comes out so I think there is some truth to certain kinds of gamer stereotypes.

Plus its fun to laugh at game culture.

No, You Stop!

http://rpgmaker.net/media/content/users/680/locker/bloodlines6.jpg

For the 5th episode of Watch Out For Fireballs, we did a good example of what would almost become a standard for the show: Deeply Flawed Gems. I'm on the record as saying that the open ended, first person RPG is more or less my favorite genre. You know, Deus Ex, System Shock, Bloodlines...um, almost nothing else? Bioshock and Dishonored sort of scratch this itch but criminy, are there not enough games like this. I feel like each one is a national treasure. I want a Bloodlines related holiday some time in April.

Bloodlines, like all those other games, is about choice. Choice is what separates games from puzzles and pure narratives. Choice is the ESSENTIAL aspect of game.... Read All For the 5th episode of Watch Out For Fireballs, we did a good example of what would almost become a standard for the show: Deeply Flawed Gems. I'm on the record as saying that the open ended, first person RPG is more or less my favorite genre. You know, Deus Ex, System Shock, Bloodlines...um, almost nothing else? Bioshock and Dishonored sort of scratch this itch but criminy, are there not enough games like this. I feel like each one is a national treasure. I want a Bloodlines related holiday some time in April.

Bloodlines, like all those other games, is about choice. Choice is what separates games from puzzles and pure narratives. Choice is the ESSENTIAL aspect of game. If you aren't making choices, you aren't playing a game. I value games that value this. Bloodlines is ALMOST great at it. For most of the game, you can sneak or negotiate or kill or use powers or what have you. What happens about 3/4 the way through, however, is the Troika effect; the devs ran out of time and/or money and things get rushed and combat heavy. So god help you if you didn't roll a combat viable character.

The game plays drastically differently based on your choice of race in the beginning of the game, which points to the 2nd bit of choice being the essential aspect of game: you need to make choices, they need to matter. If you're a Malkavian, you are batshit insane, can spread your madness, have entirely different dialog the entire game. If you're Nosferatu, you can't allow yourself to be seen by humans without dire consequences. Other races impact your skills, abilities and dialog.

Still though, the story is dark and engaging, the quests are varied, the world is rich and interesting. More and more, I'm finding that almost all of my favorite games have a lot in common with table top gaming. Emulating that experience makes for a very different kind of fun than a mario or a zelda. Play this game when it goes on sale for five bucks on Steam.

Oh, and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention The Oceanside Hotel. A haunted house mission where nothing can hurt you, you'd be hard pressed to find a more tense, lovingly crafted horror experience in games. I want an entire game of this, just haunted houses where nothing can hurt you but everything freaks you the fuck out. It's not the best horror experience in gaming (or even the best one we'd done on the podcast so far) but it's top shelf.

http://duckfeed.tv/woff/5

Developer Bits. Why Free to Play?

Recently I read a Google+ post from one of the Triple Town developers on why they didn't just make the game 99 cents on the App Store. He seems to think that buying games for a fixed price is a bad model and goes into detail on why. Ultimately because he doesn't see many indies survive in this way.

"Imagine free-to-play games as practiced by a private company that makes games with long term retention for passionate players in a tightly knit community. That fits my personal goals substantially better. So I'm experimenting. I'm learning. Spry Fox may not figure it all out this time, but at least we are driving in the right direction.

So why you don't see Triple Town being... Read All

Double Fine Amnesia Fortnight

A new Humble Thingy was dropped today in "Double Fine Amnesia Fortnight." Clipped from the site:

"Tim Schafer is revealing Double Fine’s never-before-seen game jam process!
Contribute and vote for your favorite game ideas to be prototyped (week 1).

Then, Double Fine will create prototypes of the top four ideas and live stream the process (weeks 2-3).

Contributors get to download the finished prototypes for Windows (Steam keys too!) Plus, you get two protoypes from past jams right away."

Sounds like a cool way to contribute to the next steps of Double Fine's internal demo process. If you want to vote on any of the games they could prototype, head over donate and vote!

... Read All

Torchlight Devs confirm a Thanksgiving Steam Sale

http://bigfootnetworks.com/fragmore/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Steam-Autum-Sale-300x193.png

I think we all assumed it was coming, but Runic has confirmed that a Thanksgiving sale will be happening, and that Torchlight 2 will be on sale! No dates have been spilled, but I'm excited to get TL2 for cheap.

http://www.torchlight2game.com/news/2012/11/16/happy-thanksgiving/

What are you hoping to snag?