Comedy
I love it when shots from Ogre just show up in funny places. This time, it’s from a comic strip called Stolen Pixelson the Escapist, where Ogre-powered games Torchlightand Zombie Driverhave been used for comedic purposes: Thanks to BuschnicKfor the heads-up on the Torchlight one, I was surprised to see Zombie Driver just days earlier too!
Zero Punctuation reviewed Torchlight yesterday! Of course he was both inaccurate (you don’t have to keep clicking at all, you can hold the button down) and overly harsh, but still very funny. It’s odd to enjoy watching something you had a hand in (albeit in a background technology way in my case) being ripped to shreds, but when it’s done in such an amusing way somehow it’s ok. I guess this is why Yahtzee hasn’t had his teeth kicked in by disgruntled game developers yet 😀
I really enjoyed the original Professor Layton, and was glad to get the sequel (Professor Layton and Pandora’s Box- for some cultural reason ‘Diabolical Box’ on the web site, I assume internationally some people haven’t heard of Pandora’s Box) from a friend as an early Christmas present. So far it seems like more of the same “puzzles embedded in slightly hokey but nonetheless enjoyable story, set in a whimsical Victorian era”, which is precisely what fans of the original (which includes me) wanted.
My broadband connection was on the blink this morning, which affected me less than it would usually would have because I had a dentist appointment, so I didn’t think too much of it. I heard on the radio when driving to said appointment that the whole island was affected so that made me feel a little better, and everything came back about an hour after I returned. However a friend of mine works at one of the local telecoms companies (and which is also the broadband wholesaler to the others - kind of like our local version of BT) phoned me at lunchtime to ask if my connection was back, since he hadn’t seen me on Skype (I’d actually just forgotten to turn it back on).
It’s nice when software reflects a programmer’s sense of humour and humility. This message appeared when I restarted Firefox 3.5.3 after an XP crash: Bravo - thanks for making me chuckle, and thus forgive you instantly for any error (and it might not even have been yours). Bless.
I’m probably the only person on the web who totally missed this until now, but The Guildis awesome. I don’t play WoW, and this pretty much sums up why I’m so afraid of getting sucked into it, but it’s definitely pretty funny. Thanks to Nikofor linking their music video yesterday.
For those of you who grew up in the late 70’s / early 80’s and were into games (particularly in Britain), you’ll like this: Via NimbleBit- thanks! 😀
Krod Mandoon and the Flaming Sword of Firehit BBC2last night, having been previously aired in the US via Comedy Central (this was a joint BBC and CC production). As a spoof of a fantasy genre, it was pretty much required watching by yours truly, being as I am torn between indulging my inherent sci-fi/fantasy geekdom, and being cynical about the general derivativeness of most of the genre. It was a strange beast - a real melting pot of some genuinely funny moments mixed in with some predictable gags; occasional comic gems mixed with a smattering of naff, crude humour.
Ok, this is very, very bizarre. Having bought tickets for the last 2 years, I got an email letting me know that the local summer-time comedy festivalwas returning this year, so I went to take a look at the lineup. The stand-up lineup looks pretty good, I recognise a couple of the names, and in any case it’s good to see people you haven’t come across before. But, the main thing that gave me a “WTF?
Remakes and comebacks are always in vogue, but unfortunately they almost always disappoint. Whether it’s that a brand new take on an idea just doesn’t quite work as well, or whether it’s an original team getting back together after a decade or more apart and the spark has gone, too often there just seems to be something wrong or missing. I suggest that this tendency should be called ‘George Lucas Syndrome’, in homage of he who epitomised how far you can fall from the heady heights of bygone triumphs.