Snide

This post relates to: World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King

Jeff passed over some copies of Wrath that just came in for Andy and I. You won't see us for a little while guys ;-)

I have started to love the japanese philosophy of Kaizen which focus on continuous improvement using small steps. Unlike most big sites, the Giant Bombs dev team likes to push code on an almost daily basis, with a new feature once every two weeks or so.

Today was the first day I comitted and pushed code on 4 different sites. It wasn't a hugely busy day, but I figured some people are interested on what it's like working on sites like GB so I thought I'd make a post about it. Here was my day:

• 9:00 - Leave the house and stop in at 7-11 for coffee. Then proceed to walk to work (I like 5 blocks or so away) whilst thinking about how much work I need to do on the new site we're launching.
• 9:30/10:00  - Arrive at said office, check my emails and browse my RSS feeds. Attempt to decipher PMs usually sent while I sleep from a country that starts with "The".
• 10:00/10:30 - Check in with Coonce and brainstorm on his new project, which people here will love.
• 10:30/11:00 - Check in on ad delivery and make sure our ads are hitting their targets. Test some code Andy wrote yesterday for new ads to be run later in the week.
• 11:00/11:30 - Fix a bug on GB that caused the video page promos to wrap funny because of a long title name. Fix a bug on Comic Vine that causes the home page to load all funky. It only shows up on one computer in the office, but it happens to be the guy who runs it, so that means it's a real bug.
• 11:30/12:00 - Realize that it's too close to lunch to start working on the new site, and instead go get some awesome egg/sausage scramble at the local diner. Read a copy of Wizard and lement about my comic book reading habits of late.
• 12:00 - 12:30 - Put out a fire on political base and blind push a bunch of code I'm not sure about since I haven't edited that site in forevs. Stop in downstairs after and give the dudes the scoop on our dev schedule. Use the oppurtunity to talk with Jeff and Ryan about how excited I am Cammy is going to be in Street Fighter IV.
• 12:30 - 6:30 - Spend a lot of time trying to lay out a single page on the new site. It's a complicated one similar to the main game page here so it takes some thought.
• 6:30 - 7:00 - Go downstairs to hang with the guys and marvel that Ryan edits every bad sound spike in the podcast. Chat with Jeff about ways we can make ads not suck for users, but that publishers will still like, then go into the usual routine where he reports hyper-specific bugs or feature requests and I immediately feel guilty I haven't fixed them yet. Attempt to cheer up Jeff by throwing a couple crazy ideas at him instead.
• 7:00-730 - Chat up Ethan about the new site and feel guilty that I'm not able to work on it as much as I should.
• 7:30-10:00 - Go home, play some TF2 and catch some election drama whilst drinking a beer or two. Remove a bunch of porn some asshole put on the site (thanks MB), respond to more PMs.
• 10:00-12:30 - Realize I'm kinda bored and really should be working on that new web site and head back to the office, where I find that Ethan is online doing the same thing from home. We trade compliments/insults at each other over our respective work and I get another big page laid out. I jam the tunes super hard-core since no one else is around.
• 12:30-1:00 - Watch an episode of Samurai 7, which I'm strangely very much enjoying.
• 1:00-2:00 - Check the traffic stats for the previous day, which are good. Check GB before I go to bed, get lost on the boards, then decide to write this blog because it might be interesting and I always feel guilty for the Euros that get second dibs on the boards.

This post relates to: Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel , Fallout 3

Giant disclaimer: I've only played an hour and a half or so of Fallout 3. This is just a quickie impression.

There is little in the way I can describe my absolute love for the Fallout games. For a turn-based RPG nut like myself there are very few moments in gaming where I was more happy then when I was messing with my pip-boy. I loved the setting, the humor, the story  and the general breadth of the game. What I loved the most about the series though at the end of the day was the combat. So much so that I consider Fallout: Tactics, the combat focused later game in the series, one of my favorite games of all time. Yes, you heard me right, I love Fallout: Tactics.

So, as you can imagine I've had some big expectations of the game. I was actually very pleased Bethesda got the rights to the brand because I very much enjoyed Morrowind and Oblivion. Morrowind specifically gave me goosebumps when I'd walk into a new town for the first time. Things couldn't be any better...

Today I purchased Fallout off Steam even though I knew I couldn't really play the game heavy until the weekend. The intro level is ok, it reminds me a lot of Oblivion, and to be honest everything about this game feels like Oblivion. That's ok I guess, we knew that coming in. Then I got to the combat... and the cockroachs (are you serious Bethesda, just make them fucking rats why don't you)!

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VATS is horrible. Real time aiming with real time missing, even though you are pointing at something is horrible. I know it's an RPG, remember, I'M THE RPG GUY, but sheesh, this is just a tad silly. I'm very very afraid not only will I not like Fallout, but I'm worried this combat system will bother me so much, that I'll become an old man and bitch about the better days of gaming. The days when PC games were released with PC interfaces, not consolified, dumbed down, big font style menus. And the days when an AP system was for... you know... deciding how many things you could accomplish in a turn.

What this game needed if it HAD to be in 1st-Person was a combat system ala Wizardry 8. For those that didn't play that game (many did not) you moved your party of players (all 6 of you I believe) as if you were 1 person in a FPS view. When you'd encounter an enemy, the game would switch to turn-based mode and would play the same as any other TBS game, with the action taking place in the view of that character.

This mish-mash in between shit is very bad. The real time version sucks, and the paused version sucks.

On a positive, the world is obviously Fallout and I could see myself playing through the game even if the combat continues to be this horrible, but right now I'm pretty scared I'm witnessing my worst fears.

I'll report more later, but if you're looking for an RPG vet's opinion... right now I'm a little worried.

This post relates to: Barack Obama

No, not Baraka, but Barack Obama. We checked it out and it looks legit. I also noticed when I checked out the page that it had been vandalized (uncool dude). This also brings up the question of whether or not people should be attached to games simply because they show up in ads. My vote would be no, but I'll let the community fight this one out. What do you think? Should a dynamic ad in a game count as a reference in a game?