My video review of Portal Stories: Mel, a superb Portal 2 mod. As originally seen on Unknown Hosts!
Blog
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True Detective and the Unknowable Alchemy of Good Television
Do you remember when everybody was waiting with baited breath for the second season of True Detective? You should: it wasn’t long ago, and the internet was overflowing with casting rumors and #truedetectiveseason2 hashtags. The first season, featuring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, was so engaging and featured such excellent performances that it was difficult to imagine how a follow-up season, utilizing a completely different cast, story, and location, could live up.
The answer was pretty simple: it couldn’t. But it wasn’t for a lack of trying. The cast of the second season, which featured Colin Farrell, Vince Vaughn, Rachel McAdams, and Taylor Kitsch, really poured their heart and souls into their performances. It is clear watching that they all realized both the burden they were taking on and the opportunity that they had been given. On projects like this, actors really have to give in and trust their writer and director completely, even when they can’t personally envision how the end product will work.
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Gamescom and the Industry of Hype
As I write this, I am in the middle of watching Gamescom coverage, tracking all of the huge announcements coming out of Germany this week. With the proliferation of live streaming video and the endless cycle of user-generated hype, major game publishers are beginning to realize that just focusing on one major event each year (E3) is a missed opportunity. Microsoft, in particular, has subscribed fully to this belief by saving some of its biggest 2016 titles, like Quantum Break and Scalebound, for Gamescom. This lets them keep the hype-train running months after E3’s momentum has died down, leading right into the holiday season.
For now, this seems like an excellent strategy. Microsoft’s Gamescom conference was packed wall-to-wall with great-looking game demos and exciting announcements, building up fan anticipation that should lead right into the holiday season. This year seems to be the sweet spot for this strategy; after all, Sony has to stay competitive. Xbox fans will be dominating the online conversation for some time, acting as an echo chamber, building on the hype that Microsoft generated earlier this week. Sony can’t stay away from that next year.
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Unknown Hosts 8/5/2015
Welcome to another episode of Unknown Hosts! This week, we talk news alongside some of the biggest announcements at Gamescom!
Timecodes below:
0:00 – Intro, Who’s Playing What?
9:34 – Windows 10The Good, The Bad, The Kappa
16:40 – FFVII Remake Will Have a New Combat System
21:37 – Bungie Replacing All of Peter Dinklage’s Lines in Destiny with Nolan North
26:14 – Microsoft Moving Away from Third-Party ExclusivesGame Review:
34:13 – Portal Stories: MelGamescom Coverage:
45:55 – Halo Wars 2
47:36 – Directx 12
55:30 – Full-feature DVR
58:06 – Halo 5 eSports Features
1:00:20 – First Gameplay for Scalebound (http://www.ign.com/videos/2015/08/04/scalebound-gameplay-reveal-gamescom-2015)
1:03:38 – Quantum Break Cross-Media Details
1:08:33 – Need for Speed
1:09:55 – Mirror’s Edge
1:11:06 – Star Wars: The Old Republic
1:11:33 – Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare 2
1:13:15 – Old Republic and MMO’s
1:14:10 – Sims 4
1:16:13 – Star Wars: Battlefront
1:18:13 – FIFA 16 FUT mode
1:20:15 – Smaller Gamescom Games1:22:40 – Plugs
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Rocket League, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love Mandatory Subscription Services
When Sony moved to make Playstation Plus mandatory for Playstation 4 online play, they knew it was going to be an unpopular move. The way they broke the information in the middle of their legendary 2013 E3 presentation was pure industry slight of hand. Playstation fans were too excited about Sony’s big announcements, including the PS4 price point and Sony’s commitment to physical game trading, to pay much attention to a single bullet-point listing “Online Play” as a benefit of Playstation Plus. But after a few days, the fanbase began to catch on, and not everybody was happy that the Playstation Network was now modeling itself off of Microsoft’s Xbox Live.
However, as Microsoft started giving free games to its Xbox Live Gold subscribers and Sony made their free-game service an online subscription, a funny thing happened to both platforms: their communities became stronger. On the Playstation 3, the Plus members were a small subset of the community, and many of the games that were given away for free had been available for years before. But on PS4, where most owners were subscribers out of necessity and the titles given away each month were new, many players found themselves playing the same new games on a monthly basis.