Nucular

I'm for Nuclear Power. No, not Nuklear Power(although I am in favour of that as well). I'm talkin' power plants.

Yes, even after the March 11th series of disasters in Japan. I'm not saying it's not without its risks, but I also believe the paranoia about it is doing more harm than good, and that the alternatives(like burning coal) are actually a lot worse(and certainly more dangerous).

Imagine my surprise when Germany decided that, by 2022, they will have shut down every single nuclear power source in their country. Now, for the ones that are old, that are barely being kept functional, then fine. Good. Nobody wants another Chernobyl. The problem is that a depressing number of people can't tell the difference between Chernobyl, a half-assedly built and maintained reactor even by Soviet Union standards, with a Three-Mile Island. These are the people who are afraid they'll go sterile if they're in the same room as a microwave preparing a hot-pocket.

Grimace

This makes me shake my head.

"GRIN", a game developer that went bankrupt a couple of years ago, recently talked about why the company shuttered, and why(according to them), it's entirely Square-Enix's fault. Namely that they expected the Swedish developer to "meet every milestone" for a Final Fantasy-ish game without, you know, actually getting paid for any of this. And then they asked them to send the game's code and music files through... a fax-machine.

Music.

By fax.

That trolling couldn't have been more hardcore if they'd faxed over a picture of Rick Astley.

Turtle Rock

Turtle Rock Studios, creators of the "Left 4 Dead" franchise were bought by Valve before the game was released. They parted ways. I honestly cannot blame them. Fucking Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 was a more polished, complete product, and Daikatana had better friendly A.I. I really am convinced Valve didn't give a shit about the property, and needed a quick buck. So they half-assedly rushed a game not even past its Beta onto store shelves, while charging the same price as games that have the distinction of actually having been playtested at some point.

It's either that, or they're actually proud of a game with no story, non-existent hit-detection and an in-game dependence on a group of suicidal retards(human or simulated). That one seems a little more terrifying to me.

So now that they're free of Valve's uncharacteristic failure permeating their hard work, they're moving onto the greener pastures of... wait, THQ?

Seriously guys?

I know Valve fucked up worse than almost any game developer has ever fucked up in the last ten years when it came to Left 4 Dead, but... THQ? The guys who made "Homefront"? Left 4 Dead was Valve at its absolute worst. Homefront is THQ at its absolute best, which is still pretty awful from what I hear. Is that really a step up?

I hope you know what you guys are getting into, here...

END OF LINE

~A.H.

Classic Friday: The First

Every Friday, I'll showcase an article from the past I've written on earlier blogs that I feel merit making the transition here. I'll try to limit myself to only my favourite articles, or at least the more in-depth ones. Lazy? Yes. Masturbatory? ...Yes. To those of you new to this, it'll give a weird look at my thought-process in months(and years) past. To those of you who are already familiar with these posts, um... Sorry.

Click after the jump to see this week's soggy leftovers BLAST FROM THE PAST(!!!):

Daily Dropped

There's a show at The Escapist called "Daily Drop". I avoided it for a while, since I prefer content that's a little meatier there. Here, something drops, a slow-motion camera records what it looks like as it collides with the floor, and that's that. I didn't want to have to load up a video player for something so meager. Especially when half the time it gives me a "STREAM COULD NOT BE FOUND" error message, and I have to refresh the page 8 times. And it would be especially annoying to have to sit through a 20-second long intro every time, when what comes after it is only about... well, 20 seconds long.

But eventually curiosity got the better of me, and I started watching them in immediate succession. Sometimes 5 or 6 in a row. I admit I cringed a little when they dropped an original PSX. The condom-filled-with-pudding one is a must-see, however. Those things can take some punishment.

And just as soon as I started getting into this show, they stopped doing it forever. Goddamnit.

Now we only have like, twelve shows by the "Loading, Ready, Run" crew. *pouts*

END OF LINE

~A.H.

Resistance 3 Cover Art

Speaking as a guy who has never played, nor cares for the Resistance series of games, I gotta say: not a bad cover for the third game, guys. It's simple, it'll stand out on store shelves, and it does a pretty decent job of communicating that aliens are attacking New York in this thing, without resorting to anything overly expensive and lens-flarey.

But I still see some of Olly Moss' actual artwork underneath all of the brazen corporate logo diarrhea splattered all over. Couldn't you fit an ad for Burger King on there, or something?

END OF LINE

~A.H.

The Playstation Network

Looks like Blogger is back up and running. I was considering making a proper post on the PSN outage a long time ago, but then this place was under maintenance, and then everyone else said everything that could ever deserve to be said about this issue. Not that I have any authority to speak on the matter, since I don't own a Playstation 3. I haven't seen Kaz Hirai's video apology or anything, but from what I hear it looks like this company might have finally gotten its act together. I'll believe it when I see it.

In any case, to those of you with PS3's, here's hoping the worst is over, and you can finally start playing Portal 2 online.

Speaking of, here's something related I wrote on another blog a while back: