9
Dec
Games and Gaming
1
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 demonstrate that I am a terrible person.
25
Jun
Games and Gaming
1
I will never forget the first time I started up NBA2K11. It began with a brief recap of the formidable career of Michael Jordan, arguably the greatest basketball player of all time, and then all of a sudden I found myself standing behind the man himself, in the tunnel of some cavernous basketball arena. “Are you ready?” he turns and asks; well hell no I’m not ready MJ–I don’t even know which button passes the ball! Nevertheless, he runs out the tunnel and I follow, the scene unfolds into a screaming hyped-up crowd, and it quickly dawns on me that I am on the court with Jordan for Game 1 of the 1991 NBA Finals between Magic Johnson’s Los Angeles Lakers and “our” Chicago Bulls. It is a sublime moment.
1
Jun
Features Games and Gaming Reviews
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I love driving games. Even though I drive extremely conservatively in real life–and wouldn’t have it any other way–I really let loose with my inner aggressive driver with various video games.
Codemasters games are amongst my favorites. I got introduced to the company through GRID (where’s the sequel dammit??), then DiRT 2 and now the third game in that series. We’ll get to talking about the game itself in a bit but first a little digression about presentation. One of the reasons I hate EA so much, in fact, is that despite buying the rights to use ESPN’s style of broadcast presentation for FIFTEEN FUCKING YEARS is that they have hardly done a damn thing with it until the last few years. Most of us watch football on TV and we’re used to flashy graphics, interesting stat presentations and whatnot. ESPN 2K5–STILL the best NFL football game EVAR–made use of the ESPN experience in a way that still pulls me into the game more than any other. Yeah, EA bought the rights to kill the 2K series but DAMMIT do something with that shit. Grrrr.
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4
Feb
Features Games and Gaming Hardware News Reviews Software Tech
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I’m sure that you, dear listeners, know that sometimes what seems like a good idea can turn out to be a catastrophically poor notion in hindsight. It might seem like an amusing idea: during the podcast, drink an entire 32 ounce can of Four Loko, the recently-banned alcoholic energy drink (because 12% ABV and enough caffeine to eclipse a tallboy of Red Bull certainly sounds healthy). After the first drink brought back memories of other mistakes I’ve made in the past, namely drinking raw fruit punch concentrate at summer camp, I could tell that this would bring nothing but pain. When Ben heard my suffering, supporting co-host that he is, he decided that forcing me to take big swigs from that accursed can every so often would be an amusing idea. I hope you’re all happy.
My pain and suffering aside, we bring you news of British studies proving that those damn yoofs are going to kill us all, shady IP law practices on Blizzard’s part, the potential of the Playstation Move on the PC, the enhugening of Batman: Arkham City, playing games with your daughter might make her a better person, Michael Phelps is bringing his slick naked glory to the Kinect, Treyarch complains about how we’re all big meanies, Apple flicks their customers in the ear again, and much more. Please, enjoy my pain, you cruel bastards.
FGEC Podcast Episode 12 (02/03/11)
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28
Jan
Features Games and Gaming News Retrospectives Reviews Tech
1
Here is the promised second bit of our back-from-vacation podcast. We hope you missed the sounds of our voices ringing in your ears and our enjoying our new header image. (For the record, it’s Kasey on the right, and yours truly on the left.)
After wrapping up the first half of the episode, we moved on to covering Valve’s delightful Portal 2 announcement, Sony and Activision’s PS3 hacking and CoD:MW2 troubles, more amusing “analysis” from Michael Pachter, Japan’s ongoing JRPG problems, and some awful gaming promotions that make us feel like we’re in 1995. Join us this weekend for another podcast of dubious quality and certain drinking.
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30
Dec
Features Games and Gaming Hardware News Retrospectives Reviews Software Tech
2
Welcome to the last Full Glass Empty Clip Podcast episode for 2010! This milestone might mean a bit more if we were more than a handful of episodes in, but we’ll take what we can get.
For this final episode, we talk about Bulletstorm and the potentials for amusing censorship contained within, Microsoft refuses to stand for the libelous claims that they will improve their products, the Uncharted movie might not be doomed after all, lawsuits abound, and we discuss the games of 2010 and what we’re looking forward to in 2011. We spend so long discussing the year that was and the year that is yet to be that we go almost a full half-hour past our usual one-hour mark, so grab a drink and something to eat, settle in for the long-haul with us and have a happy New Year.
FGEC Podcast Episode 8 (12/29/10)
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23
Nov
Features Games and Gaming Hardware News Reviews Software Tech
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Well, we said Saturday or Sunday, and it appears to be Monday (Tuesday, more like), but here we are regardless. Yes, it’s the second episode of the Full Glass Empty Clip Podcast, and while our sense of timing has degraded somewhat, the quality of the podcast itself has improved! We have our names at the start of the podcast, so you know who’s filling your ears with news and mic pops! We have music at the beginning and end! Be amazed! Or at least experience mild bemusement! We also have news on the next LEGO movie game, we peruse Black Friday ads for your edification, Kinect is Goddamn magic, ESPN contains uninformed asshats, and I ramble on about how the Assassin’s Creed series is punk to the very core. Enjoy, dear listeners.
FGEC Podcast Episode 2 (11/22/10)
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
1
Jul
Games and Gaming Retrospectives
4
In the beginning, id created the Engine and the Game. And the Game was without form, and void; and vanilla deathmatch was upon the face of the net. But Rocket Arena appeared in the lists of the servers. For David Wright said, Let there be frags: and there were frags. And players saw the frags, that they were pure: and RA3 divided the l33t from the llamas.
I have a deep and abiding love for Rocket Arena 3. I believe that after all these years, it remains the pinnacle of pure, unadulterated deathmatch play, stripping away everything extraneous to get to the equisite, zen-like, blood-soaked core. The perfect meld of simplicity and depth, strategy and reflex, skill and ballistics. And, my love for Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead 2 in recent times notwithstanding, RA3 remains the sweet stratospheric Everest of my long, long computer gaming career.
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25
Jun
Games and Gaming
5
Steam’s summer sale is on, this time called the “Steam Summer of Peril Sale”. It’s on from 24 June – 4 July, with extra-special one-day-only deals every day in addition to the standard discounts on offer throughout the sale.
Go to the Steam store’s front page for the big overview.
Don’t forget these useful sites: SteamPrices.com, for cross-region price comparisons; this Steampowered Forum post, for a good, text-only summary of what deals are on (when it’s updated). And when you’re done, visit SteamCalculator.com to see how much money you’ve splurged via the Steam Store this time. Feel free to suggest more using the comments.
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 [...]
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.
Rockstar have axed a number of team members at the San Diego studio responsible for the development of Red Dead Redemption. “About” 40 employees were handed their pink slips, out of a team of 180. The remaining staff will concentrate on the upcoming DLC packs for Red Dead.
Seeing this recent post on RPS got me in the mood to do some singleplayer QuakeOneing. Just thinking about it gave me a shiver of anticipation, and I could hear the shotgun pow-tch-chk, the hiss and growl and roar and the clank-wobble-boom of grenades. That was it: the itch needed scratching. As soon as I [...]
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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