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If there’s just three mods that have held my interest for years now, they’d have to be Natural Selection 2, Recall to Hell and what I consider the crown king of them all, Black Mesa. With Recall to Hell appearing to be dead in the water while NS2 and Black Mesa forge ahead, a lot of you may have seen the new official trailer for the mod, which was released at the end of last month, running on The Orange Box build and looking so damn good I want it yesterday.
But for all those people who saw the trailer, but didn’t dig deeper, the Black Mesa team had also released a slew of videos on their YouTube channel, including an audio blooper reel, reading outtakes and a whole bunch of other stuff. I’m going to let the audio speak for itself, but I haven’t laughed this hard in a long time. Goes without saying, I just found my new ringtone! This one goes out to all Half-Life fans like me who’ve practically memorized the opening train ride lines.
They usually say that when Judgment Day is near, we’ll see a lot of signs pointing to the Antichrist. So for all those who doubt that the PSP is it, first, we get news from Famitsu that the PSP is (surprisingly!) outselling the DS at least as far as this year is concerned. Then, two French exchange students in London get stabbed more than 250 times (one 80 times after he was dead) so that the perps can get away with two unbelievably rare and more-expensive-than-the-Kohinoor-diamond black PSPs. And if that don’t prove it, we’ve got the PSP wreaking havoc with lives here as well, and worse, we’re the ones who started it all.
When Abhinav’s friend got married a couple of months back, he decided that nothing would be better than blessing the happy couple (and the husband in particular) with a PSP. Talking about the London murders last night, Abhinav mentions that the couple, who’ve been enjoying a textbook romance, recently got into their first major fight. Over the PSP, and this time, it wasn’t the usual complaint we’re used to seeing.
Did You Just Wet Your Pants?
Who said gamers don’t have a social life? For all those skeptics out there who believe gamers are those species who just camp in the dark basement and game all night jacking off to the barely-clad Japanese RPG chicks, ten of us hardcore gamers from Bangalore got together to prove them wrong!
Chuck. Ex-Stanford. 20-something. Doesn’t have a girlfriend. Supervisor of the “Nerd Herd” at a Buy More by day. Gears of War pwner by night. Sounds familiar? Dive right in.
Oh, also a US national security “asset”.
As such, I envy the guys who work at Google, since they get to do so much that’ll probably get my ass fired at my workplace. To add even more fuel to the raging inferno, it looks like they took their love for Mario one step further than I ever could. In a recent contest conducted in-house, the codemonkeys at the web’s largest Internet company were allowed to decorate their office spaces any which way, where one team decided that Mario was the way to go. The Dev Ops team, armed with cloth, wrap, posterboard, foam and lots of Mario love, managed to get the job done with typical Google aplomb, only to lose to a team that chose a Jumanji theme and a motion sensor box that roared whenever someone walked past. Cheats!
Livin’ in a Mario World [Google Code Blog, via 1UP]
Ahoy thar me harties!
Aye, before you start readin’ this post, I’d recommend headin’ o’er t’ har and read up a bit on the most important day (okay, it isn’t but my mind likes t’ imagine it is) o’ the entire year: International ‘Speak like a pirate’ day, shiver me timbers! (not t’ be confused with the International ‘Speak Like the Goddamn Batman’ day or the far more local ‘Walk like I’’e been kicked in the balls by M$’ day which Enoon has been celebratin’ for the past few weeks). Due t’ the utter awesomeness o’ Pirates, I was goin’ t’ ask for a guest speaker t’ come in today, but it seems the Pirate-ninja feud sort o’ intensifies at this time o’ the year meanin’ their all out busy kickin’ ninja ass. So fer now its all me! YARRR!
*coughs as he’s kicked in the nads by several TAP members*
Okay, okay, fine! Onto more serious matters then. I’ve been rather quiet recently for several reasons. I finally got an Xbox 360 and my recent time has been divided between working, studying, writing and playing GoW, WiC, SoTS, PGR3 and a few other games.
Weird! After EA announced that they’d be publishing “Simpsons, The game” for all major platforms, I was expecting our esteemed colleague Krishnan to come out with his hands held high , fists clenched shut and a resounding “WOOHOO! USA! USA!” coming from his lips. Looks like he’s suffering from the ‘over stresses workus’ disorder.
Gamers and fans of the show would be able to take control of the Simpson family (save Maggie), interacting with nearly every character in the show’s huge roster. Apparently, America’s favorite family realizes that they are trapped inside a video game and they must use their new found whacky superpowers (for eg. Homer can eat fatty donuts to transform himself into a huge ‘Homerball’) to overcome their latest dilemma. My only complaint from previous Simpson games was the lack of original humor, which we’ve come to expect from a show of such great caliber. Scott Amos, Lead game producer for this as of yet untitled project has assured us that humor would be given the highest priority, incorporating more than 8,000 lines of dialog from the show’s scriptwriters. Slated for an Oct-Nov 2007 release date, I can hardly wait for the next great adventure in the life of Homer J Simpson.
Thankfully, humor still has a tendency to spread to those even remotely disturbed by video gaming mockery. Just look at the guys who made this Amaterasu (from Okami, silly!) get-up for their precious pup! Extra props for not even bothering to cleanup afterwards, god just look at that mess.
Source: Joystiq
Damn! Get to a certain age and all you hear about from your parents are about you getting hitched. What’s worse is that everytime someone you know gets married, the pressure mounts on you to go and walk down the Green Mile with your happily-ever-after (bah!) partner. What makes the whole thing worse for a hardcore gamer is that destiny always plays an unfair hand by throwing you in with someone who has absolutely no respect for your gaming habits and would rather complain about how childish you are while she plonks her ass down on the couch to watch cooking shows and brain-deadening soap operas that would make any grown man try to kill himself in the first 5 minutes.
While most of us try to convince our girlfriends and future wives about how we love games just as much as they love shoe shopping, some of us stash our favorite games in secret nooks that she would never find. Heck, her finding the secret games stash would bring more raining death-fire on our heads than her finding our extensive porno stash and sex toy collection. And then there are the wusses, the ones who are completely willing to sell out, quite literally, by putting years and years of gaming history for sale on eBay for a ridiculously low amount of dough.
Take a look at this guy. He’s selling almost every game console and videogame that’s been released for the last 20 years on eBay just because he’s going to marry some girl! Jeez, man, you’d give away classics that you don’t have a whelk’s chance in a supernova of getting back just for a girl. Just take a look at his collection, he’s got systems like the Atari 2600, ColecoVision and the NeoGeo and practically every top rated game ever made in the history of gaming and he’s practically signing his soul over to the devil. Face it, dude, you’re gonna get a LOT more love from Shining Force than you’ll ever get from her. I hate to think what’s gonna happen to this guy if she decides to dump his ass some day and walk out on him. Did I mention he’s got the original box packaging for almost everything he owns? Yeah. this guy deserves to wear the ball and chain, and I most certainly don’t mean the proverbial one.
Wanna own gaming history?
Head on over to the gaming pariah’s eBay listing >>
Like what you see? OK, so that’s an obvious April Fools Day joke and I am about 10 days overdue! But still, there’s something absolutely magnetic about fake consoles. So, in true gamer fashion, 99lives came up with an article about the five best fake gaming consoles of all time! From the Sega Phoenix (or as I like to call it – the Phonix), an unholy marriage between a suitcase, an Xbox 360 on a bad day and a plastic lunch box to the PSPboy, a brilliant looking gaming device that I’d so totally buy if it was real, the article lists more weirdos like the Sega Hedgehog, the Apple iGame and the Nintendo ON. Shh, don’t tell 99lives we told you this, but we’ve also got the inside scoop on two new awesome handhelds – the Nintendo DS2 and the Sony PSP2. Like we said… SHHHH!
Pocket Mode… mmmm!
Wonder if the PSP2 will finally have a second analog stick? But what the heck, I’d still buy it anyway! More fake console goodness after the jump.