Merry Christmas, Tap readers! Or, Happy Holidays if you happen to celebrate something else! Lots of us have to hit the road on the holidays, and may be far away from our regular game consoles. So this week I took a quick break from sipping on eggnog to check out a couple of Christmas-themed games on the Android app market. Free holiday fun below the jump!
When Kickstarter really took off, I told myself that I wouldn’t use Tap as a forum to promote every single Kickstarter that our readers ought to support if they’re really our friends. And I’ve done pretty well thus far, I think!
But Cloud Imperium’s Star Citizen is, put simply, the most exciting game I can think of coming out in the next few years. It has the outstanding Wing Commander pedigree (courtesy of designer Chris Roberts) and aims to resuscitate a genre thought dead. And as we speak there are only days remaining to help Star Citizen reach even more outrageous levels of funding.
I’ve already said what I would have gone on to say about the starfighter sim genre, in my first ever article for Tap! (The circle, as they say, is now complete.) So if you need convincing, read that.
If you don’t, go ahead and show Star Citizen some love – before it’s too late!
Please forgive my indulgence in some backloggery-related ephemera today.
A game called Halo 4 is out! Perhaps you have heard of it.
I would be writing up my Impressions, but I have not gotten to play it yet. The reasons for this are myriad but could mostly be summed up with the words “money” and “time.” I have been busy this week. I’m working on a game! And I have another thing on my plate too.
See, I got another hit of the Red Vs. Blue for a review. It was sent post-hurricane and the review embargo on it is lifted. There is a small problem, which I must enumerate. We are, in fact, a Halo Household. That means …
The Art of Video Games is located, for just one more week, in Washington D.C., in the Smithsonian American Art Museum. It is a few blocks away from the bulk of the museums proper, a bit of a jog from the central area surrounding the National Mall. It shares a building with the National Portrait Gallery. To actually see the exhibit, one must climb up to the third floor, sneak around past a coffee lounge, and enter a dimmed area that looks less like an art museum exhibit than it does a night club.
So I’m one half of a fledgling podcasting team (the other half being Kristine Chester of Fanboy Comics) that makes up the Worlds That Never Were Podcast, and we talk about cool stuff and engage topics in games, comics, and movies. We’re both former English majors, so, you know. Sometimes we get rhetorical.
In our latest episode, we were super pleased to welcome Tap’s own Steerpike on for a chat about some games that everyone should play. Take a listen!
Last week I posted about a crowdfunding project. This week, I’m posting about another. And let me tell you, it is completely – completely – different.
The headline says it all. For a small investment, you can help German director Uwe Boll make another Dungeon Siege movie. The official title of the film, should it get off the ground, will be The Last Job: In the Name of the King 3.
I don’t really play Halo. I mean, I have played Halo. We have the Halo 3 commemorative Xbox 360. So you could say that I enjoy Halo. But I don’t actively play Halo. I am not what you would call a “Halo person.”
But a friend – a member of my current D&D group – started passing around Fails of the Weak to us one day, and… I got pretty hooked.
Traverse City, Michigan is known as the cherry capital of the world. Michigan’s cherry production is about 250 million pounds, and represents about 75% of the tart cherries and 20% of the sweet cherries grown annually in the United States. That is a lot of goddamn cherries and I live right in the middle of it. Traverse City, as a rule, puts cherries in EVERYTHING, from butter to hamburger.
Cherry Capital (see above rule) Con or C3 is primarily a comic book expo with a multi-faceted offering of cultural media history. The offerings range from mainstream comics to work from smaller artists to a large contingent of Stars Wars memorabilia.
The previous Cat’s Away Chronicles featured the fine chaps over at Arcadian Rhythms having a wee drink and a chat with Electron Dance’s Harbour Master. The latest in his series sees him venturing up North to visit me where we talk, talk about playing some games, talk some more, talk some more about playing games, play some games, then talk some more. Thankfully Harbour Master is awfully good at editing and managed to focus our chatter on the games we played and a round of quickfire questions. Chainmail skirts, stealing Steerpike’s concubines, evolution versus creationism, the meaning of Braid… it’s all in there. Go see!
If you watch one video this year, make sure it’s of Electron Dance’s Harbour Master drinking with the fine folks from Arcadian Rhythms. It would seem that Mrs. Harbor Master and the miniature Harbor Masters are off on holiday. You know what that means: BEER, and lots of it.
Hit this link to check it out. It’ll make your day.
Hello, readers! I’m writing to you from sunny San Fransisco, California, where I’m about to hit the Expo floor for GDC 2012! Lots of game conferences are about show and spectacle: loud trailers and huge press announcements. But although there are always a few pieces of news, the annual Game Developers Conference is really a bit different. It’s more of a time for learning and reflection. It’s where developers talk about how games are made, what games …
At least one other person expressed interest in seeing how my attempt to clear out my Steam indie games backlog was going. After a holiday full of travel, I have returned home to once again check out some more games I bought this year, then never remembered to play. The screenshot above is from physics puzzler NightSky, by Nicalis, and I will also be talking about Jamestown, the “bullet hell” shooter from (apparently local to …
Just as I was lamenting that there are so many great games already that came out in 2011, many of which I haven’t actually had the chance to play yet, the Steam Holiday Sale starts up. You already know about this thing, I’m sure, because two nights ago when festivities began, the Steam client was so lagged that I couldn’t even figure out how the sale worked. I was staring at error messages. Now, a …
Falling into the category of “he makes more money than me but still hasn’t given me any” comes this announcement: Steerpike’s older and more successful brother Marcus is hosting a new show called Hidden City on the Travel Channel. It premieres December 6, so set your Tivos!
Out of boredom, to help a friend, or in the sense of pure exploration, I occasionally play social games on Facebook. Technically, I’m among the correct demographic for them, except for the part where I’m a self-identified gamer. So checking out the trends in these games is a matter of interest to me. Often these social games have some element of crop-growing or gardening in them, which seems to be capitalizing partially off the major …