Category: Gaming

For Want of a Checkmark…

“The Battle of B-R5RB was the largest and bloodiest in the history of warfare. More than 20 million soldiers were killed and more than 600 warships — some of them kilometers long and capable of destroying lesser vessels with a single shot — destroyed in a battle that raged for 22 hours…[But] The biggest battle in the history of forever started with a clerical error.”

By way of Dangerous Meta, it has happened again. Wired‘s Bo Moore explains the tactical snafu that precipitated the costly Battle of B-R5RB in Eve Online last month. “Though it was just a game, the 7,548 people who fought the Battle of B-R could not have taken it any more seriously — and not simply because they lost virtual ships worth more than $300,000 in real-world money fighting it.”

For Want of an Eggplant.

“To watch Rex play Spelunky is to watch someone who has spent hundreds of hours — entire days — with the game, training his muscle memory, familiarizing himself with every possible situation, memorizing Spelunky arcana and honing techniques. Yes, he’s naturally gifted, but his talents are clearly bolstered by a colossal amount of experience. If anyone were going to pull off a solo Eggplant run, it was going to be Bananasaurus Rex.”

By way of longtime reader Jared Dunn, Polygon‘s Douglas Wilson tells the story of a successful solo eggplant run in Spelunky, 30-For-30 style. “[T]o someone who’s played Spelunky, those times aren’t just impressive — they’re superhuman. They’re like the four-minute mile of video games. And watching Rex use the Teleporter, one of the game’s most lethal tools, is like watching Michael Jordan play basketball with a bomb, successfully.”

I’ve never actually played, or even heard of, Spelunky until this article, but thought this was a fascinating deep-dive into one particular gaming subculture.

Warlords of Draenor (Aaaahoooo).

He’s the hairy, hairy orc who runs amok on dwarves. Lately he’s been overheard in Orgrimmar. You better stay far back, he’ll rip your lungs out Jack. Huh, I wonder if he leveled tailor. Aaahoo, Warlords of Draenor, aahooo. And, yes, that song’s been in my head since, over the past weekend, Blizzard announced the fifth and most recent Warcraft expansion. I was in for Outland, Northrend, the Cataclysm, and Pandaria — I’m up for another tour.

Blue Man Group | Examine Meth.

“What, exactly, does it mean to be a ‘man’? It’s a question that sits at the dark, warped heart of the entire series and its anti-hero protagonist. A nerdy chemist whose brains haven’t earned him any power or respect from the world at large, the terminally ill Walt decides that he’s finally going to get that power and respect through whatever means necessary (and whenever possible, using science). The show doesn’t just trace Walt’s arc from Mr. Chips to Scarface, as Gilligan famously described it, or from Walt to Heisenberg; it also maps his journey from being a ‘pussy’ to being a ‘man.’ And while he succeeds in his goals, it’s a transformation that comes at a high price.”

You’re not wrong, Walter, you’re just an asshole! In a well-thought-out and close reading of the show as a whole, Wired’s Laura Hudson discusses “the toxic masculinity of Breaking Bad.” “The series begins with what seems like an odd image: a pair of pants, flying through the air. Much of what follows is about who gets to wear them.”

Also among the many farewells, homages, and critiques of Breaking Bad as it departs: screenshots from the Breaking Bad text-adventure game. Admittedly, this sort of article is basically just egregious click-bait, only one step higher on the content chain than Buzzfeed listicles. (Breaking Bad as a Nintendo Game/Choose Your Adventure Book/series of commemorative plates!) Still, I’m always down for a little Infocom nostalgia.

My Money’s on Scorpion.


“What’s really great about these clips is the way they incorporate classic sprites from the game and put them in a real-world setting. It’s…pretty amazing that technology has advanced to the point where YouTube users can do this stuff without the backing of an entire studio.” An enterprising Youtube user films himself sparring against Mortal Kombat‘s fiercest fighters. Somebody needs to work on their combos.

When Routine Bites Hard…


And ambitions are low. And resentment rides high, but emotions won’t grow… “The game asks players to explore relationship issues like miscommunication, emotional impasse, and the sadness of separation, and players must learn to accept that not all relationships are salvageable. Each level of the game is inspired by a verse of ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart.'” Meet Mario’s older, depressed cousin, Emo! Anyway, haven’t tried this yet, but it’s definitely in the queue.

Follow the Bouncing Dot.

“‘We are trying to understand how human motor performance changes with age,’ the researchers say. ‘We believe that research should be done in collaboration with people—with people like you who are interested in learning about themselves and helping research.'”

An online Harvard experiment tries to guess your age by evaluating your mouse-clicking ability. Hard to say how good it is, really. It deemed me thirty — eight years too young — but then again, with blogging and gaming both ranking high among the extra-curriculars, I probably use a mouse more than most people too.

Where Worlds Collide and Days Are Dark.

“Here I am, standing outside Winterhold, watching the snow blow in gusts down the path. There’s that bridge to my right, and that mill to my left, and the docks beyond the bridge. I hear a dragon somewhere. I still have no idea what else is up in the mountain behind the city, despite having sojourned to its peak multiple times. I’ve still never collected all of the types of blood that one demon asked for…There’s still so much of Skyrim left to see, and so much Skyrim left to play. But I’ve probably seen enough.”

Onward to the next adventure: With the announcement that there’ll be no more xpacs, Kotaku‘s Kirk Hamilton says farewell to Skyrim. To be honest, I haven’t even started Skyrim yet. I borrowed my father’s copy many moons ago, but I’ve been daunted by the scope of the game — and afraid of the inevitable timesuck it will generate — since it came out. As Alan Sepinwall noted of the currently-unfolding Golden Age of Television, it seems to get harder and harder to keep up with all the great pop culture out there at the moment. Not enough time in the day.