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Precipice

By Tycho – September 21, 2010

I should probably be pushing this more forcefully, but that's not really in my make up.  Precipice!  There's more of it.  

Mine All Mine, Part Two

By Tycho – September 20, 2010

Mine All Mine moves into Phase Two, depicting the savage and repeated "key learnings" this game heaps on you with a quickness. Minecraft is possessed of so many truths, both inherent and user-defined, that people engage with it in very personal ways. Occasionally, engaging with it means being murdered in the dark.

Mine All Mine, Part One

By Tycho – September 17, 2010

I've been out of the office all week, as some variety of Streptococcus has colonized my wife. I've had to parent full time for three days, just three fucking days, and already I know why housewives once turned to Laudanum.

Dotage

By Tycho – September 15, 2010

Because we tend to come around for the high point of Halo's arc - in when a new game has been released, all but out before the first map pack hits - our core skills only tick up marginally from game to game, barely abreast of their inevitable atrophy. People who play Halo specifically, people who play Halo because it is Halo and not because it is a videogame, eat us alive.

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Castle Ravenloft

By Gabe – September 14, 2010

I have had the opportunity to play the new Castle Ravenloft board game a handful of times now and I’m very impressed. We brought it over to a friends house the other night and played it with someone who had never even touched a D20 before. She listened to us discuss all the ways that it was similar to D&D 4e and then asked why we would play this board game instead of just playing normal Dungeons and Dragons. I thought that was a really good question and coming up with an answer made me realise why I like the game so much.

The Policy

By Tycho – September 13, 2010

This is essentially how I feel about Halo. I can probably count on one hand the number of discrete rounds I've played alone. It would be like eating a pizza alone. I've done that, too; not much there to be proud of.

The Eighth Attraction

By Tycho – September 10, 2010

Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions knows what it is, and doesn't try to convince you otherwise: it's fanservice, served neat in a highball glass. The contextual jumping can feell raw, the camera sometimes makes poor life choices, and the year 2099 is so dense with stimuli that a person from 2010 can hardly make sense of it. It's also genuinely funny, not every now and then but often, which is a rare thing. Is it perfect? No. Does it have Spider-Man in it? Yes. Four times! That's way more than most games.

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The Trenches

By Gabe – September 8, 2010

Obviously the biggest announcement of PAX this year was Duke Nukem Forever. There was another announcement though that you might have missed. During our very first Q&A of the show we took the stage with Scott Kurtz to announce a brand new comic strip called the Trenches.

The Wager

By Tycho – September 8, 2010

Frequently during panels at the Penny Arcade Expo our own Gabriel will receive compliments on his work. This is as it should be; the visual leap between the first strips and today's thrice-weekly offering is so absolute as to bring the true authorship of the earlier comics into question. You may click here for a harrowing, educational juxtaposition.

The Lucifex

By Tycho – September 6, 2010

You might recall that during the last PAX on the west coast, I had to leave because (much to my great surprise) a human being was trying to emerge from my wife. I've have used the "nation" metaphor for PAX on multiple occasions, and it's a comparison with value - like Brigadoon, it is a fleeting kingdom. Born during the event proper, she is its princess - and all of PAX her shining court.

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Mouth Rituals Exposed

By Tycho – September 3, 2010

It's pretty incredible where young people draw the line between which which things are impossible and things which are made possible by inexplicable magicks. People living in a space station, right now over our heads, clearly that's not true. But a tiny flying person at the helm of some tooth based economy is a thing quickly absorbed.

The Ultimatum

By Tycho – September 1, 2010

We kept thinking about the Xbox Live price hike as the week went on, trying to divine its purpose, and came up with a big ol' goose egg. And a comic, I guess. And I ordered a big stack of cut-rate 12 month cards. But other than that, no. Well, get more money, I guess. That part is relatively straightforward.