Demoman Intervention, Pt. 3

If you didn’t read Parts I and II, here’s the scene: Demoman’s team has set up an intervention for him. He just can’t let go of the booze, poor guy. Scout and Sniper are now dead as a direct result of a) their bungled intervention and b) Demoman’s insanity. Now, here’s the thrilling conclusion(!):

Medic: “You’re out of control, my Scottish friend.”

Demoman: “Bah! You don’t even know what out of control means! I’ll show you out of control!”

*Demoman sticky-jumps, then sprays grenades in all directions. Pure, unadulterated chaos ensues. Spy is in bloody little pieces all over the parking lot.*

Like a Boy Scout, Man. Like a Boy Scout.

Plans. Plans are good.

I’d like to think of myself as a decent gamer. I’m not too hardcore – I actually get outside from time to time, for starters. That being said… I dabble. A twenty-four hour gaming session now and again, the occasional Mountain Dew IV drip; nothing too serious, you know?

That’s why all these recent Team Fortress 2 announcements have me shaking in my boots. The Spy? Really? Really! I feel like I’m at least decently proficient at most of the classes in TF2, but the Spy? For all the sneaking and skulking around I do in other games, for all the times I choose to be a rogue, or thief, or solar-powered ninja, I’ve never been able to wrap my head around the Spy. The backstab? Haven’t mastered it. Disguising myself and making it to the other team’s intel without being detected? Can’t do it without half the people on the other team taking one of those just-in-case shots at my head, even when I’m invisible. No, scratch that. Especially when I’m invisible.

That’s why the Spy freaks me out, man. I can’t defend against him. How can I when I’ve got no idea what a typical Spy would do in any given situation? One time the same Spy killed me 39 times in a row. I didn’t touch my computer for a week after that. My therapist said that’s an understandable emotional response to emotional trauma. Then I told her that I’ve started to hit my friends whenever I see them, just in case it’s a spy in disguise. She referred me to a specialist.

Let Them Wear Hats

Slotted Backpacks? WTFBBQ!

Slotted-backpack inventory systems. Customizable headgear. Achievements separated from unlockables. What is Valve doing to my beloved Team Fortress Two?!

I’ve got to admit, it’s driving me crazy to see major changes being implemented in my favorite time-waster and not being able to check them out. As of right now, I don’t have TF2 installed for the Windows partition on my laptop, and I’m not even sure it has enough space to hold it. That’s all purely speculative, of course; when it takes six or seven tries and forty-five minutes to download a one meg PDF file, the very thought of trying to download and install the seven gigs that are TF2 is simultaneously laughable and horrifying.

Pay Attention: This is what a GFWL Gamer Looks Like

CoolingGibbon

Everyone, meet CoolingGibbon, diehard GFWL gamer.

I’ve been in contact with him over the past several weeks, asking some questions and generally trying to get a better idea of what motivates him to use GFWL. Read on for the transcript of our email interview.

Can you tell us a little about yourself?

Well, I’m a 22-yr old guy currently pursuing a computer science degree. I’ve been a PC gamer for over 8 years, before which I used to game on a NES and Gameboy as a kid. But after being introduced to classics like Wolf 3D, Quake and Half-Life… I decided to move over to PCs completely. And I’m glad to say that I find the PC undoubtedly the best platform for any serious gamer.

How did you get into GFWL?

My first introduction to GFWL was with Halo 2 a little more than a year ago

In All Fairness: Games For Windows Live

First of all, let me start off by saying that I haven’t been too kind to Games For Windows Live in the past. Among other things, I’ve said that nobody is even aware of its existence, that it’s useless so far, and that it needs to be scrapped completely and replaced with something new.

Recently, I’ve made an honest attempt to put my own biases aside and look at the situation objectively. On the one hand, GFWL doesn’t approach the utility of Steam, not by a long shot. That being said, most Steam users have a rather short-term memory about these things – for the first several years of Steam’s existence, it was roundly mocked and derided as little more than Valve’s version of DRM. I’ve had some bad moments with Steam personally, most notably when my computer is temporarily without internet access – Steam throws a righteous fit. GFWL also has some challenges that Steam hasn’t faced, like trying to adequately interface PC gamers with console gamers.

Whipping out the Crystal Ball

The government is spending too much! The solution is clearly to pair that spending with reduced income. That'll get rid of our national debt.

Today I read a solid dozen news and opinion articles on the economy, partially out of curiosity and partially out of a faint sense of despair. The long and short of it is that as usual for the past year or so, the economy is sucking it up more than we previously thought. Some, like Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman, think the Democrats aren’t doing nearly enough, and should be reacting faster than they are. On the other hand, you’ve got the Republicans, who are even more useless than the current administration, insisting over and over for tax cuts. That’s like standing on the deck of an already-sinking Titanic and calling for greater compartmentalization of the ship’s bulkheads.

What’s a PC gamer to do? There are a lot of problems facing the market we love so dearly, and most of them are only going to get worse. Here’s what we’re looking at:

Pirates Are Just Underserved Customers

Apparently, those who pirate videogames (those for PC in particular) are just underserved customers – so says Valve’s Jason Holtman. He recently participated in the Game Business Law Summit at SMU; below is the original article on the topic from Game Daily:

EA now on Steam

In case you hadn’t noticed, EA has made many of its triple-A blockbuster mass-audience super cool fun PC games to everyone’s favorite digital content distributor Steam. These include:

Spore

Left 4 Dead Demo Available

The Left 4 Dead demo is now available on Steam! Check it out here.

Left 4 Dead

Of course, if you’ve already pre-ordered the game, you’ve probably been playing the demo for a week. I’ve been consumed by Fallout 3 as of late, so I didn’t get it. I will however, be downloading and checking out the demo later this week (read: after finishing papers for school).

My Macbook Impressions: Two Weeks In

I’m typing this on my still relatively-new Macbook. As the title suggests, I’ve been in possession of this notebook for a grand total of two weeks, and below are some thoughts as to my experience so far. Keep in mind that before this, my use of Macs / OS-X has been minimal. Things that Mac users don’t necessarily notice stick out for me. I’m directly comparing the usability of this system to that of my main PC, in regard to both hardware and software.