27
Aug
Features Games and Gaming Software
49
Welcome back to the feature formerly known as Do You Like Free Stuff. This time around, I am offering up one pre-order Direct2Drive copy of Civilization V.
The contest will run til 8:00 P.M. Eastern Thursday September 2nd.
How do you enter? Just leave a comment below. I will randomly choose one winner this week and announce it Thursday night.
It isn’t often I’m moved to rant about video games. There are plenty of other nerds with better thought-out opinions, usually supported by graphs and proofs and the phrases “non-trivial”, and “Let N be…”.
But this, this is a hill where I plant my flag, affix bayonets, and take a stand, with all the power in my laughably flabby body with questionable hygiene.
Custom. Maps. In StarCraft. II.
25
Aug
Games and Gaming
9
Civilization IV is a fantastic game. In fact, any game starting with “Sid Meier’s” is probably going to be awesome. But the Civilization series in particular has always gripped me, and kept me playing for hours on end. There’s something so satisfying about finally taking over the world through an ideal combination of war, politics, culture, science and/or religion.
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22
Aug
Games and Gaming Reviews
6
The core strength of gaming’s appeal is, I think, the fact that a game’s success or failure essentially boils down to one question: is it fun? All the other factors that we judge a game’s quality by are essentially tacked-on items that either increase or decrease the fun contained in the game. There’s a lot of wiggle room as to what constitutes fun or not fun, as well as a few absolutes – particularly in the way that games can fail to be fun – but what really matters as far as a game’s worth is concerned is whether or not you as a player enjoy the experience of playing the game. It doesn’t matter how ambitious a game’s design is or is not, as long as you get a kick out of playing.
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18
Aug
Games and Gaming
9
So there you are, having just finished riding out into the middle of nowhere Mexico to find that last damn woolly blue curl for your Survivalist challenge, and blammo, you fall down a little cliff that your 90yr old grandmother could have stepped down and your horse dies. Now, you have a couple choices here:
or
In a game world, one would think the choice would be obvious: Shoot a dude and take his horse. After all, you’ve got places to go, and this is the Wild West, where it’s every man for himself. Also, that’s not a real dude! But what do I do? I walk.
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17
Aug
Features Games and Gaming Retrospectives
10
John Carmack is, perhaps, the nearest thing to a demigod the gaming world can claim to have. Half man, half deity, touched by the hand of the eternal, wandering the earth, solving really hard math problems, Sisyphean, DOOMed forever like Leonardo (or any of the other ninja turtles) to eternally strive for a goal that can never be reached — to capture reality.
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15
Aug
Games and Gaming Quickies
8
More web game goodness: this one’s heaps of fun once you get the speed ratcheted up (hint: go through the blue tunnel marker thingies). Paint landscape, whiz crash woohoo. You know the drill.
It’s 1977. I’m 12 years old. It’s a gorgeous Northern BC summer day, one of those glorious fleeting perfect days that are all the sweeter in the frozen north, because the memories of mud and slush barely fade before the leaves have already begun to turn again. Utterly pure blue sky, sun warm on the skin, grass a deep impatient green, a light breeze off the lake that is so invigoratingly packed with oxygen and piney perfume it might as well be cocaine. I’m playing third base, it’s what we’d call little league if we called it that in Canada back then, I’m just beginning to feel the awkwardness of adolescence, but the sheer pleasure of being alive and standing on that dirt under that gigantic bowl of sky on that day is more than enough to let me ignore my self-consciousness. I’m a big, strong kid, and even if I’m more bookworm than jock, I enjoy sports.
We return after holidays, work, and the inevitable technical breakdowns, but we persevere to bring you another podcast! This week, we discuss the impossible: Minecraft goes 1.0, the unfortunate: GSC Game Studios and GamePro fold, and the stupid: EA continues their über-ban policy, parents name their kid after a character in Skyrim, Telltale gets caught [...]
Making video game characters with whom I can fall in love takes a cocktail of hard work, genius, luck and Jennifer Hale. It turns out that making video game characters I can hate takes practically no effort at all. In this short series of articles a small collection of pixels, logic and random events will [...]
To get myself back in the groove, I will make this short and (hopefully) sweet. I have 3 Steam copies of Worms Reloaded to give away. All you have to do is comment below, and I will randomly pick 3 winners. No stories needed! I will pick the winners Thursday night, and announce them sometime [...]
Well, hell, it’s been a long time. I’m sorry for the disruption in service. To make up for it, I’m giving away 2 copies of Portal 2. You might have heard of Portal, it helped launch the Orange box, made TF2 a household name (at least in my circle of friends) So, here is the [...]
Welcome back to the feature formerly known as Do You Like Free Stuff. This time around, I am offering up one pre-order Direct2Drive copy of Civilization V. The contest will run til 8:00 P.M. Eastern Thursday September 2nd. How do you enter? Just leave a comment below. I will randomly choose one winner this week [...]
No, it sadly isn’t a real Golden Ticket to Valve’s headquarters, but listener Katrel was nice enough to make it for us after our opining last week (he tells us he found it in a “box” of Portal 2), which takes the sting away a little. Thanks, Katrel! This week has been slow for the [...]
Steam News: Two years ago Valve hired the talented team behind the popular top down co-op mod Alien Swarm. Since then they have been busy working on the Left 4 Dead Series, and now Portal 2. However, we never forgot about Alien Swarm and the team has spent a lot of time bringing the game [...]
Street Fighter IV has some competition…
Sorry for the announcement delay, it was a long and busy weekend. The winners are: SpacePope NiceGuyMike Congratz to the winners! Sorry to all that did not win, but check back soon for more fun and exciting contests.
Oil Derrick Worker You never see them, because, well, they’re kinda isolated, but you hear reports about them, and they sound terrifying. Tai Chi Master If you ever swing that ax faster than an heavily sedated sea sponge, he goes down immediately. But should you go slower, HOO EEEEE!. Hipsters You only ever encounter their [...]
Well, hell, it’s been a long time. I’m sorry for the disruption in service. To make up for it, I’m giving away 2 copies of Portal 2. You might have heard of Portal, it helped launch the Orange box, made TF2 a household name (at least in my circle of friends) So, here is the [...]
Thanks to everyone who typed some letters and then hit the “Submit Comment” button! The 5 lucky winners are: Timothy beardlace Lawton27 gamegeneral Gemmy check your email, or steam popups. Enjoy your prizes! Stay tuned for our next event.
Hello, Full Glass Empty Clip readers! We’ve received a literal trickle of emails complaining about the lack of sensory stimulation that our humble blog provides. Here’s an example letter: “Dear Full Glass Empty Clip: Your website is wondrous to behold, a treat for the eyes, both in design and the uniformly high quality of the [...]
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