Found via Reddit, and it made me LOL.
Quick, name ’em. Bet there’s one that’ll stump most of you!
16-Bit Last Supper
video games
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The Binding of Isaac
AliasAlpha pointed me to an interesting article about gamifying religion, on how to modernize religious beliefs to compete in today’s more complicated and more nuanced understanding of morality and society. I have a lot of thoughts to unpack on that, but I don’t know that I can manage right now, where I’ve got yet another super-long day today, for an expected network cut tonight overnight. So my apologies that blog fodder is sparse.
Meanwhile, from that same article, there’s a mention of a game I’m going to have to get and play: The Binding of Isaac. Check out the intro screen.
Looks like it’s a religiously themed Zelda-alike with an interesting corollary plot about Isaac’s psychology as he descends into power fantasies and madness after being in isolation for so long. Kinda like a religious Alice, I guess. This is the kinda heady stuff I like in my video games — interesting plots that just can’t be explored as a TV series or movie, or that would be completely lackluster or ridiculous as a book. And it promises a good lot of creepy, to boot, which is interesting given the cutesy cartoon styling.
Abobo’s Big Adventure
Remember Abobo, the mini-boss with the big round head and the weird moustache in Double Dragon? The one you had to jump-kick twenty or so times to beat, who basically tried to eat your head if you attacked him in any other way? Well, it turns out Abobo had a son, named Aboboy, who has been kidnapped by ruffians.
Now, thanks to the magic of Flash programming and nerds with too much NES experience, Abobo has sallied forth to destroy every NES game in his quest to rescue his son. Nothing is sacred, nothing is safe, and classic gaming will never be the same again.
It is free to play, it contains parodies of so many NES games it would not be possible without the Fair Use clause of the copyright laws that exist presently, and it is. SO. EPIC.
“In their tongue they call him… Equiskiin, Pony-born.”
As epic as Skyrim is, it turns out there’s a way to make it just that much more epic. Replace every dragon with Fluttershy.
If you’re playing the PC version of Skyrim, you can grab this mod at Skyrim Nexus. Well met, creator zdzichorowerzysta. Well met indeed.
More novel control schemes: Skyrim Kinect
I’ve been thinking about getting a Kinect for PC, considering how hackable they are, and how there’s an open-source stack useable cross-platform, and how Microsoft actually failed to fire the footgun recently by backing down on a lawsuit they were trying to initiate against someone who adapted a legally-owned Kinect to build said open-source stack.
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Biofeedback for video games
This is pretty awesome. Advancer Technologies released what’s probably a viral video for their biofeedback sensors, which take muscle impulses to create signals that you could connect to an Arduino HID controller which turns any arbitrary input signals into specific key- or mouse-presses. Ergo, playing Mario by flexing.
Of course, Mario involves going right a lot more than going left. So next time you see some guy with a really insanely large right bicep and a flimsy left one, you can now more safely assume he’s a video game player, rather than a chronic masturbater. (Besides, that’s the forearm. Get it right.)
A Literal Take on Assassin’s Creed: Revelation trailer
If you haven’t played them, the Assassin’s Creed games are like conspiracy theory fanfiction for atheists. They take significant liberties with most mono- and polytheistic religions and build a what-if scenario where they’re all technically correct, but all the events recorded have a wholly different explanation — specifically, technology left by an ancient precursor civilization.
That, and they’re about all sorts of epic ass-kicking through historic venues, and some of the best parkour in any video game to date.
The original trailer for Revelations made me at first say “ah, come on, a THIRD Ezio game?” But I warmed up to it rather quickly, between the fact that it’ll take place in Constantinople, and the promise that it’ll provide some actual closure before what promises to be the actual end of the series in Assassin’s Creed 3. Brotherhood left everything way too open for my liking.
And then, this “literal” interpretation of the trailer came along and completely sealed it for me.
I will love this game so hard.
(The literal version of Brotherhood’s spot is pretty good too.)
Female protagonists in video games as eye candy and as role models
Via reader Aliasalpha, Kotaku Australia has a piece up about a Street Fighter panel at NYU’s Game Centre where Capcom staffer Seth Killian (a.k.a s-kill) was asked, point blank, “why so sexist?” He said he was going to “take it on the chin”, but proceded to blame cultural differences between Japanese and Western cultures, playing his answers for laughs from the crowd.
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“I’m tired of being a ‘Woman in Games’.”
Oh, look! The skeptic blogosphere ain’t the only place where being a woman is in and of itself a novelty! Leigh Alexander at Kotaku discusses how she’s treated as a gaming journalist, by virtue of her sex:
It’s just that I’m shocked that grade-school concepts like “diversity is constructive” and “treat human beings equitably” are concepts that somehow still need championing, still need arguing for. I mean, really? I have to explain many times that the convergence of varied perspectives makes creating things-–like video games-–more fruitful? Or more simply: You think boys’ clubs are better than spaces where everyone gets equal respect regardless of their gender? What’re you, five?
Now why does THAT sound familiar?
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Pokemon, Minecraft, Guitar Hero and Magiquest: ALL SATANIC.
This guy ain’t original about Pokémon, neither. At least he pads out his talk with some assertions NOT made by this other crazy preacher by including the fact (FACT!) that the names of Pokémon are actual, honest-to-goodness Oriental demons.
Continue reading “Pokemon, Minecraft, Guitar Hero and Magiquest: ALL SATANIC.”