YourGamer.Net

You encounter an Epic LoLCat!!

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Star Wars reference.  Original, neh?

I’ve got a big post to write, but I don’t have the energy tonight, so lemme toss you a game link.

The Bounce is an extremely simple, short, arcade-y sort of game that I find myself playing over and over again,  thanks to the relaxing tune and the cute graphics.  It’s not gonna win any awards, but it amuses me.
Sorry for the failure of a post, but believe me, tomorrow will be epic.

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So, I was going to talk about another game today, but when I checked my email yesterday I saw a message from the Video Game Voters Network. Evidently, a state senator from WI (my home state) thought it would be a good idea to impose an added tax to video games. The proceeds from this would go to moving 17 year olds that have committed nonviolent crimes from the adult court systems to the juvenile category.

Okay, so it may be unfair. Not may, it’s absolutely unfair. I mean, it’s for a good cause, sure, but why single out video games? If the gaming community accepts this sort of thing, it’s paramount to admitting that our hobby is responsible for delinquency. Why not apply the tax to books? Films? Music? The connection is obvious, and the reasoning is absurd.

I contacted my state senator about this, and today I got a reply back to the effect of “Senator X doesn’t support new taxes of any kind.” Which kind of pisses me off. I know he’s a republican and therefore is basically required to vote against most new taxes, but I’m sure that the constituents that write to him regarding the sin taxes on alcohol or tobacco get a better reply. This is what makes me so angry. Gaming is a lifestyle, like it or not. Serious gamers spend a lot of time on there hobby, and it reflects on the way they live. They deserved to be treated as thoughtfully in politics as any other special interest group. Instead, we’re ignored, vilified, and slandered. AND WE DO NOTHING. So this post is a call for all who read it to take action. Join one of the political groups related to gaming (The video game voters network is an excellent way to stay updated). Do something to protect your lifestyle. Gamers are notoriously “easy going” when it comes to politics, and if that remains unchanged, we’re going to see our rights in serious jeopardy.

Oh fine, you want a game? Here, try Sonny, an entertaining combat strategy game with a superb score done by David Orr, a good friend of mine. It’s good for a few hours of fun.

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Now i’m a cheap ass and tend to be like that for large amounts of time and getting my freinds pissed at me. But the side effects actually help me out a bit, like having a source of free music thats free to download and enjoy. And thusly, I also have a tendency to lean toward the nerdcore scene.

Nerdcore Rap:

MC Frontalot - the original and supposedly first nerdcore game rhyme master in town. Love him or hate him, he’s had a long time to improve his skills, and it shows.  My favorite is Bizarro Genuis Baby.

YTCracker - this one has a more overal professional  background, (a writeing credit for Xibit , rap group) but he’s all nerd core, and is more wll known for this because of his rap battle with MC Chris.

MC Chris - One of the first geek rappers ever known, mainstream notoriaty for his persona on the animated tv show Aqua Teen Hunger Force. MC PeePants himself. Best tracks include Fett’s Vette (the bad spellah remix is best), OWNZ, (if you can find it, the mario remix kicks ass), and Tractor Beam (very funny).

MC Lars - Not really a geek in rapping terms, but a political type and intelligent. He started an experiment to see if freely downloadable songs can turn a profit in order to disprove the RIAA’s estimates on money loss attributed to MP3 and p2p downloading. very nice, best so far is Download this song. and as the name suggest, is just a google search away from being in your playlist.

welp, thats all i can come up with off the top of my head.

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The story of Steam is well known to most PC gamers. The initial resentment, the crashes, the bugs, then the sudden upswing, the acquisition of indie titles, the increased ease of use, turning it into a useful tool more than a barely-tolerable burden to your gaming experience. Steam and Valve have together revolutionized the face of PC gaming, in terms of content (episodic games, third party devs all rolled into one app), installation and patching (all done automatically…if devs are gonna release a buggy build, the least they can do is have it patch itself when they finally get around to fixing it…), and most of all, exposure and advertising. How many people had heard of an indie studio calling itself Introversion before their outstandingly quirky RTS Darwinia was featured on Steam? With that success, the entire catalog of Introversion games started appearing on the service (Defcon, the classic Uplink, and the upcoming Multiwinia), and subsequently many other smaller studios started marketing their games on Steam. The platform has become a viable contender to become that “golden bullet” that will unify PC gamers, the answer to Xbox live that Microsoft’s own ham-handed attempt, GFW Live, clearly will never be.

So why bring all this up now? Old news, right? Well, what if Steam isn’t the golden bullet, but merely the trend setter? What if Steam is the prototype for countless other, similar systems of distribution? This could just mean a further splintering of the PC community, which, as some analysts would have it, can only lead to the DOWNFALL OF PC GAMING AS WE KNOW IT. Of course, this is BS, since PC gamers have exclusive, unlimited access to the most open ended online community known to mankind, the freaking INTERNET. Still, it’s an interesting point, and one that’s brought to the forefront by the freeware doodad known as “ZoopTEK Launcher.”

ZoopTEK is, according to their website, “a small organization built around programming for fun or creating useful programs.” This means that ZoopTEK has the notable distinction of being a delivery program for both gaming AND non-gaming software, though the focus is undoubtedly on gaming. The program is super-slim, at just over 500k, and grants you immediate access to several of ZoopTEK’s downloadable games. The reason the program was created, evidently, was to make an easy way for consumers to get the .net framework and Directx files that the games depended on, and it downloads these files automatically…but the potential is so much larger than this. The user doesn’t even need to check the website for new games, or updates to old ones…they’re just…there. And if you try a game and don’t like it, one click, and you’ve got an instant uninstall!

As for the games themselves, I can’t honestly claim to have tried them all. From the ones I have tried, most are passable for a short diversion, some are complete crap, and one is excellent (Zombsand, an outstanding zombie-survival-themed roguelike that I’ve been using to keep my hunger for Left 4 Dead at bay. Definitely try it.). But truly, that’s not the point. The point is, this is just another example of indie developers taking a concept from the commercial scene, using it, adapting it, and making it completely unique (and improved in many ways). That’s the sort of thing I love about the indie scene, and that is why we should ALL be paying attention to it.

EDIT: SO after writing all this up, our lovely editor johnwedd (killjoy =P ) informed me that ZoopTEK has been around for a while, before steam even. So, I stand corrected, but my point still stands. Indie devs are versatile and unique, and deserve notice.
Also, john mentions gametap, the well-received service that provides older games through a well-designed launcher, available on a rotating schedule of some sort or other (being on dialup, I can’t actually try it out to verify exactly how they do it). That sounds pretty awesome as well, and the thought of “recycling” old games in this way is novel. Too bad I can’t claim THAT spark of genius for indie, since gametap is run by Turner Entertainment. Ah well, can’t win em all.

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For all you Halo 3 fan bois and gails there is good news. The first official map pack is coming out conveniently enough named the Heroic Map map. It will be released on Dec. 11 for 800 Microsoft points (10$) or you can wait until spring for it to be released free. There is standoff a vehicle friendly, very symmetrical map. It is a nice open space. Next their is foundry. It is essentially a warehouse full of boxs creating different floors and hall ways. Bungie has been nice enough to add the level into the forge completely empty leaving a soccer field style map for people to get creative with. Last but not least in an indoor vehicle friendly map (small vehicles) with an a tunnel system that gives the map it’s name Rat’s Nest.

Bungies Release Information

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well, well. Its new and improved.

Psychonauts is FREE for fucks sake i love that - despite wither or not you love or hate the game, it was decent. Great gameplay and storyline with a sense of humor that can go on forever. It has a cult following, but its biggest downfall was its shoddy control and slapped together interface. if anything its a game that you either love or hate, no in-between.

Mr.T and William Shatner do WoW- that much awesome is bound to come up in World of warcraft, now we need chuck norris, and we may all die happy.

Senators want total rework of ERSB ratings - ands its all because of, you guessed it, manhunt 2. I gotta admit, everyone knew that it was comeing. and we all knew Rockstar would be the cause. now we all know that manhunt 2 is nothing less than Mature rated. you must be 18 to be able to deal with it. after watching a few videos of it, i barfed a little in my mouth.  But wether or not its enough to trigger a total reworking of the system, is up for debate.

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I’ve decided on a little experiment, since our lack of writers is apparent and we aren’t rich and have the luxury of buying all the games we want; I’m going to do a news mash-up of gaming stuff i find in my overly clogged RSS reader. this way we have content, pretty much up to date, and its an excuse to blatantly rip off headlines from other sites that may be more informed than we are. its a low down dirty trick, so I’ve decided to also link the direct story(s) that i leech off of as well as give a little bit of original commentary.

• the King of Kong on DVD - this documentary based on a hot sauce business man that loves donkey kong, and his high scores. To me its a way to give the arcade generation the respect it deserves before us young assholes come in and screw it up.
• Super Mario Galaxy looking to overthrow reining champ - The latest in the Plumbers adventures has been comeing up fast on the reining champ Legend of  Zelda: Ocarina of Time, who’s overall score in all of the reviewers picks, comes to 97.8 % (give or take). I don’t think that a Nintendo game being the big man on campus is anything new, its the fact that THEY BEAT THERE OWN GAME in the process. (behold, the power of Nintendo!!!!)
• Jack “the ASS” Thompson, STILL won’t shut-up - i went on a mini rant about this very topic in my last daily, and i stand by that. I sincerely believe that in the course of his wish to see all video games burned in a great, big bonfire hitler himself would be proud of.
• UbiSoft vs LowTax: Hot legal on legal action - Now that the whole ebaums world shit storm has passed, i guess that its now vogue to sue small non-corporate affiliated websites because they didn’t worship the media ground you walk on. I’m curious as the point that which Ubisoft wishes to base this legal action on. Is it gonna be, “blatant and perfectly legal use of free speech” or “Mommy! LowTax is makeing fun of me!!!and made me cry!!!”? Booo-fucking-hoo.

welp thats all i can scrounge that looked interesting to me, i hope you liked them enough to click on the neato links, or even DiGG it. anyways, Ciao!!

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Games that are free and worth every penny.An article of old commercial games gone free.Perfect for the budget gamer.And just everyone that has to save spare change to keep the DSL hooked up. (like me).

Freeware has been getting a bad rap ever since every code monkey and there mother, thought that they had game design talent. its sad really.Lots of clones, bad ideas, and good games filled with spyware. Oh, it was terrible for a time. Then in the past few years, things have gotten serious.

Independent developers finally honing latent skills and give there work freely.May the gaming gods bless these guys. there are many freeware games that are actually worth the trouble. For instance, Americas Army, a great FPS and very well designed. now theres a butt load of freeware that makes a good portion of the more common “scratch-ware” and cookie cutter commercial games out there look like a high school programming assignment.

Open source games, engines, and what not make the talent pool for indie game designers and programmers less and less exclusive. Tools and Community resources have been giving the indie game companies, freeware and otherwise, equal, if not better, footing in the development area. When compared to the commercial companies and development studios that is.

I have quite a few friends in the indie game development scene, not alot, but a good handful. All of them pushing hard, convinced there game will change the gaming world some how.

anyway, i’m rambling, now onto the links and review goodness.

1up.com holds a fairly complete list of damn good Freeware games that would take you a years worth of googling to track down. 101 of them to be exact. All given a bit of space and some a screenshot. But, 90% percent of them go directly to fileplanet links and what have you. you’ll get the game alright, but to find the website will take a bit of digging.

Also, for those that want to see games go freeware then you should check out Liberated Games.

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Many many, good sites out there. Much information to go around and that means, LINKS!!

yes good people, lots and lots of links, with good creamy geeky goodness.

CrunchyRoll - if you’ve ever called yourself an otaku and have the complete series of bleach manga, and most of your DVD/video file collection is anime. then this is your site. Asian entertainment at its very best. you have to sign up, but i have never gotten spam because of it.

Geek Entertainment TV - all things geek, in a nice roving reporter format. the archives are awesomely amusing style that prooves that G4TV isn’t the only high quality nerd media center.

Great Games Experiment - a site thats like MySpace and Garage Games combined into one. not all that complex, but the peoples there are good, and its not developer exclusive, gamers, artists, devers. or just lazy bums with to much time on there hands.

w00t Radio - great streaming radio station, geared toward those that play mmorpgs . they favor NCsoft mmo’s but WoW players are known. DJ Jester is a great guy, hell, all of them are great people. good taste in music to.

Dungeon Runners - ever wanted to make a simple straight foreward MMO without all that nasty business of top-of-the-line graphics, storyline or subscription fees? then someone beat you to it. It plays like a Diablo 2 and World of warcraft love child.

My Art Gallery on Deviant Art - Shameless plug? Crappy art? semi-nude anime chicks? yes,yes,and yes.

well its 3 pm over here in colville, i work at 4 and i just febreezed my socks. after i’m done cleaning the linens i’m gonna head out and earn a pay check. so any questions? Comments? Nude pictures of Erenst Hemmingway? go ahead and send them.

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