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Showing posts from 2013

My first time at IGN

I've been wondering what it would be like to visit IGN's offices ever since I started following their site pretty closely a few years back. The videos just don't do it justice. I finally got my opportunity yesterday. The illustrious podcast Beyond celebrated a milestone event, their 300th episode, by hosting one killer of an event at their headquarters. Myself and 400 other fans packed ourselves in a small room to witness Greg Miller, Colin Moriarty, and Andrew Goldfarb do their thing. The podcast was amazing and had a slew of guests including Chris Roper, Ryan Clements, and Shuhei Yoshida. I got to meet Ryan McCaffrey, head of Xbox at IGN and host of podcast unlocked (which I follow intently) and also got to meet up with Mitch Dyer co-host of the same show and personal buddy (we've met twice, were buddies now). I also interrupted Mark Ryan Sallee's time to ask where the Tech Fetish Fresca machine was. He is as handsome as they make him out to be. I did not end up w

The life of a writer

Hello San Fransisco! I hope I'm not interrupting anything. I'm currently in the big city taking a little time off, but also to visit IGN for the first time. So far I have not seen much of the city, at least not yet (the local transit scared me after my experience leaving the airport), but just being here has inspired me to push myself harder to write more. San Fransisco is home to a lot of great things when it comes to the video game community, and I'm here to take that all in. I'm crashing on an old friends couch and I after only being here for 12 hours I can already tell this is going to be a fun trip. The two guys I am staying with are currently developing a games and knee deep I'm the games industry. Getting to hear about their story and their lives in San Fransisco is life inspiring. That's why I'm writing right now! If I want to be a writer I need to take action. Does it have to be about games? Nope. Can it be about the two guys I'm crashing with

The Last of Us

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The Last of Us is a unique game. It's hard to put my feelings about it into words. At it's core the game is about survival. You play the role of Joel, and aging male who has lived through the apocalypse. You travel across the United States with a young girl, Ellie. I don't want to get into too many spoilers, but each stop along your journey plays out in different interesting fashions. The different encounters, especially the ending of the game, really make you think. Think about life, about what you're doing, and about what really matters. At the end of the game I was left with more questions than answer. Not questions for the game to answer though, but questions I needed to answer for myself. What would I have done? If I were there what would be the most important thing in my life? What could I not live with out? These questions still go unanswered. It's hard to answer them without being put in the situation. I'd like to think I'd make the right decision,

BattleBlock Theater Review

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I have been waiting for Battleblock Theater since the second I finished Castle Crashers. For those of you who don't know The Behemoth, they are a developer who for the past several years have been working on mainly Xbox Live Arcade games. They released Castle Crashers back in '08 to huge success, and have hotly been working on a follow up game since then. It is finally here in the form of Battleblock Theater. BattleBlock is a platform puzzler on it's surface, but it's also much more than that. The game includes co-op and an online arena mode, but that's just the beginning. The animation, action, and decapitation is really the heart and soul of BattleBlock. With everything The Behemoth put into BattleBlock it's no surprise the game turned out as amazing as it did. My favorite mode in the game is by far the main story. In story mode you either play solo or co-op. While playing co-op you are forced to help each other through the level to be successful. The inte

How I first found Rooster Teeth

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This past week RosterTeeth, the well known creator of web content, celebrated its tenth anniversary. During their weekly podcast they celebrated the momentous date, but something the founder Burnie Burns said during the extravaganza struck a chord with me. During the show he stated he enjoyed hearing how people first heard of RoosterTeeth and Red vs Blue. Gavin Free, who was on the panel, shared his story from back when he was 14 and started watching what is now a ten season machinima back around episode five. I fell in love with Rooster Teeth during it's first season of Red vs Blue as well and that's where my story begins. The story is nothing to glorious but still a nice trip down memory lane. I'm 25 years old now, so back then I must have been only 15, a year older than young Gavin. I was in high school and played a lot of Halo like any good teenager was in those days. I remember my friends and I were at a local playground after dark (because there was nothing e

Pax East: Transistor

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Pax East has come and gone again for me. Being a Massachusetts native this is the one gaming convention I can readily get to. And boy am I glad I got to be there this year. I got to see a lot of great games. Although it seemed like a scaled back show, mostly due to the fact that the console generation is coming to an end soon,  there was plenty to be seen in the nooks and crannies of the expo floor. The biggest highlight for me was a game out of the Supergiant Games booth, Transistor. For those of you who don't know who Supergiant is, they are the folks that created Bastion which hit back in 2011. I loved the game so much I played it through twice just to see the second ending, a feat I rarely do. Bastion has been ported off the Xbox and on to almost every platform (PC, Mac, Ipad, and even the Chrome browser store) so if you have not given it a shot yet I recommend you do. Transistor is aimed to hit in early 2014, but had it's first playable event during Pax East. The lines t

Short Reviews for 2013 - Tomb Raider

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If your like me I'm clicking to another page after I read the first paragraph of a videogame story. There is just too much data and news out there to be had. So here is a summation of all the 2013 games I'll be playing and looking at critically, in an easily digestible format. Tomb Raider 3/5/13 Tomb Raider's non-stop action and adventure make for a terrific game. The story and character didn't grip me like I was expecting, but they are not even needed when the game is as fun as it is. Level design is spot on, which is what kind of polish an amazing game like this needs. Final Score: 9 Amazing Crysis 3 2/19/13 Final Score: 6.5 OK Dead Space 3 2/5/13 Final Score: 8.5 Great Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch 1/22/13 Final Score: 9.0 Amazing DMC: Devil May Cry 1/15/13 Final Score: 7.5 Good

Community Podcast Unlocked Episode 9

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So I'm not sure how popular these podcast posts are but your stuck with them so take it. The good news is that new upgraded from Mix Cloud to an actual good service with helpful tools and things. So here is the [link] to the site where we will be hosting now. You can download, and take it with you or just listen on your computer. We make it so easy for the modern day lifestyle. The show should be subscribable now as well (still working on iTunes), just click on the buttons until it works for you. Or ask me for help and I'll get you hooked up so you'll have every new episode every month. So enjoy our talk about Dead Space, DMC, and the next gen hardware. Until next time, Cheers! Your browser does not support the audio element. Podcast Powered By Podbean

Dead Space 3 Co-op

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Dead Space 3 was an interesting game for me. Never having played much of the first or any of the second, I was going into Dead Space 3 pretty cold. The only hook that got me was co-op (guess it was a good thing they added it). I ended up enjoying the co-op aspects of this game so much I just had to write about it. Co-op in Dead Space 3 doesn't play like any other game I've played. You and your partner are not just playing as two Master Chiefs, or playing as a character that just so happens to be by the protagonists side, be it AI or human controlled. Instead in Dead Space 3 player two is in control of John Carver, a bodyguard for the captain that has recruited you for this mission. So what makes this game different is that the scenes of the game play out differently whether or not you have an actual partner playing with you. An example is that a tractor is falling off a slippery hill side (This is a scene from a trailer, so no spoilers). As Isaac Clarke you scurry inside the

The Next Generation of Hardware

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I talk a lot about the next wave in gaming hardware. If you couldn't tell I'm very excited. So when Sony posted a cryptic teaser video last week, we all knew that it was on. The rumor mill has been going crazy since the launch of this teaser ad. What is Sony going to talk about at this huge event on February 20th? Everyone thinks it's PlayStation 4 related, but what excatly will it be? Will they show games? A date? A price? No one is sure, but we don't have to wait much longer to find out. For the sake of discussion we are going to assume they are going to at least announce the next PlayStation (verdict is still out on what the name is going to be, I think a reboot to just 'PlayStation' would be awesome.) One big question this raises is, if this is a new PlayStation announcement where does that leave Microsoft? Obviously Microsoft is planning a next gen system as well. So does this this screw up their plan? Or does Microsoft just continue down their pred

A social experiment with The Unfinished Swan

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I have been itching to play the Unfinished Swan since its release last year, but recently this idea came to me; what would a gamer do with this game if they had no prior knowledge of the title such as the game mechanics behind it? Hopefully this does not spoil anything for you, but the game mechanic at the very beginning of the game is you are in complete whiteness and you can throw black paint balls to see where pieces of the environment lay. Since I read reviews and coverage of the game, the first minute or so of the game was spoiled for me, but of course it had to be for me to be intrigued by it. But what if it hadn't? What if someone's guiding hand brought me to this inaugural white screen and I had no clue what was going on? Well for me that was out of the window, but my girlfriend who gets 90% of her game knowledge from me had no clue what this game was. Perfect. So I sat her down, let her watch the thirty-second intro, and then the screen went all white and

CPU Podcast #8

Another month, another CPU. This month I appeared in my second CPU podcast along side host Nick Hahneman, and fellow casters Yair Donin and Mike Gorman. So if your the podcast listening type, enjoy. Remember that I enjoy every CPU podcast with my Mix Cloud app on my phone but it is also easily listened to from the website (link below) and this widget.   CPU episode 8 by Community Podcast Unlocked on Mixcloud Also if your the twitter type I'm sure your  subscribed  to mine already, but if  not I'm  @CaptainCauli and Nick is  @NickisNixed , Yair is  @YairDonin and Mike is  @GroovyMike Enjoy the show and until next time... Cheers!

Top 20 Games of Xbox for 2012

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A few day's ago Xbox Live's Major Nelson posted the most played games of 2012. The post can be found here  for reference, and the reason I bring this up is that some of the listings really jumped out to me. I feel that there is a lot to gander from this list. So open that list up in a new tab, and follow along. The first note is that the Xbox Live games are ranked by number of users on a daily basis. The Xbox Live Arcade games are ranked by units sold. A couple of the rankings are no brainers. Call of Duty is ranked #1. The one interesting thing about Call of Duty is that last years game (Modern Warfare 3) is ranked right below the newest entry (Black Ops 2) from November of 2012. That means more people played the new game in just the one and half to two months that it was available than a full twelve months combined that last years game was available. Call of Duty players must really drop off quickly after the game release, contrary to the indication that people play Call

2013 list of short reviews for lazy readers

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If your like me I'm clicking to another page after I read the first paragraph of a videogame story. There is just too much data and news out there to be had. So here is a summation of all the 2013 games I'll be playing and looking at critically, in an easily digestible format. Tomb Raider 3/5/13 Tomb Raider's non-stop action and adventure make for a terrific game. The story and character didn't grip me like I was expecting, but they are not even needed when the game is as fun as it is. Level design is spot on, which is what kind of polish an amazing game like this needs. Final Score: 9 Amazing Crysis 3 2/19/13 The story wasn't all that interesting, and neither were the characters. The gameplay was fun but mainly consisted of cloak, kill, hide. And your abilities didn't seem to expand very much after the beginning. It left a desire for more substance taste in my mouth. Final Score: 6.5 OK Dead Space 3 2/5/13 Amazing action game but lacking in ch