I’m in Spokane this week to visit family and get some work done on my tattoo. Coming over here isn’t my favorite thing in the world but I brought plenty of stuff to do. I’m playing Spell Quest on my iPad, Muramasa Rebirth on my Vita, and Loadout on my Surface Pro. With all that at my fingertips I’ve hardly had to interact with human beings at all!
Even if I don't grab a specific bundle, I always watch the video which accompanies the bundle. It's, like... a thing. I like the syncopation of DRM Free and Helps Chari-Tee, both as they are presented verbally but also that these are two things to value. This one has Antichamber, Swapper, and Monaco, any one of which would be worth a multiple of the average; it's also got Austin Wintory's fucking piano shit from Monaco, and more besides. It's a bruising, vicious bundle, and should you forego it, I will be forced to mutter ineffectually under my breath.
It's true, everybody is talking about Titanfall. Today's strip is about Titanfall. It's entirely possible that Wednesday's comic is also about Titanfall (it's about Titanfall). I can help you understand: it is because games are almost never as good as you want them to be.
The official page just got updated, but I can tell you here also: Alex Rigopulos (CEO and Co-Founder of Harmonix[!!!]) will be kicking off the show. The bands are announced in there too, but I wanted to call out Bit Brigade (WOW) and The Doubleclicks, who have just three days left on their Kickstarter.
While we waited for the Titanfall Beta to accrete, we talked about our Valentine's Day plans. Or, I should say that he talked about his plans. I have a very hard time with things like that. It's no excuse, or it is an excuse, but not one that bears any kind of explicatory power and will not result in any kind of authentic amelioration. I freeze up to this day when it comes to any kind of scheduled romantic overture. You can get married, have two children, and still experience "first-date" style paralytic events!
We were sorta going over all the stuff we've been occupying ourselves with, trying to figure out which one of them might present a handle or might be transmuted into jpeg form - Loadout maybe, we've been playing that. Then I mentioned that I had, inexplicably, decided to become a Planeswalker or whatever. That's when he took the opportunity to card-shame, but I know absolutely every Goddamned thing about him. The ordnance lobbed in the strip was delivered because it would be effective; it's by no means the largest payload I have. There are profundities within profundities.
We have had a bunch of requests for a co-op game that Tycho and I can play together during a stream. So today we will fire up the Lego Movie Video game. Look for us to start around 2:00 pm PST.
The new site hit last night and we've been following all the feedback. The site is new and will get plenty of updates and tweaks as time goes on so if you’re not digging it, I would urge you do be patient and see how things shake out. With that said, you can always bookmark the http://www.penny-arcade.com/news page for a more familiar experience. This page gives you all the newsposts with full text and you’re just one click away from the comic strip.
Club PA is back! It’s not exactly like it used to be a decade ago though and so I wanted to break down for you exactly how this is gonna work and what Club PA members can look forward to.
You can still go and rate the game however you want to, but the way that Dungeon Keeper pretends to gate reviews is funny. It's funny! I don't know how bad it actually is in toto, but it absolutely one hundred percent looks fucking bad. Everyone, indeed, every organism would do this if they thought they could.
Anyone who has been around the site for awhile knows that we aren't shy about trying new things business-wise. They don't always work, but I want this to be a place where we make bets on things. Funding the site via a Kickstarter campaign was just such a thing; in addition to being experimental, it was one of the first steps we took toward moving backward in time. It reminded us of when we ran the site essentially on donations, which was something I really liked doing. It was only two of us back then, so it was a very different proposition financially. Still. Going that route was incredibly instructive personally and professionally. Here's what I mean by that.
I mentioned the stream earlier and I wanted to talk a little bit more about it. Originally we thought it would be something we do a couple times a month but we’ve been having so much fun playing games and chatting with everyone that we’re doing it almost every day now. Even if it’s just for an hour everyone here at the office really looks forward to the streams. People bring their laptops out to the lobby and we all hang out on the couches. You’ve probably seen Jamie in the streams acting as a moderator and answering questions. Her Handle in there is JamiePA and she’s not just doing that kind of stuff on Twitch.
Tycho and I will be trying out a new game on the PS4 this afternoon and streaming the experience. I wasn’t too keen on Outlast for a couple reasons. The big one is I tend to avoid scary shit. I don’t handle scares well at all just ask my wife who has entered a room on more than one occasion and seen me scream and collapse on the floor. I don’t watch scary movies and I avoid games like Silent Hill for the same reasons. I’ve been told Outlast is crazy scary so it wasn’t exactly on the top of my list. Also a game where all you can do is run and hide isn’t really my style. It might be Tycho’s style though so he’ll take the controller for this one and I’ll be riding shotgun.
AC IV is happening today at 2:00 pm Pacific. Come hang out and chat with us. We're happy to answer questions about PA and games while we're playing. I've had a few people ask what game we will stream next after AC. The new Strider hits the PS4 in a couple weeks and I'm pretty excited for that. The new Thief will also drop around the end of February. My guess is you'll see us streaming both of those. I'm gonna see if I can score early copies of either of them as I think a stream before a game launches could be cool.
Robert Khoo is not a person who sends rousing links via email. It's not part of his persona. But he did send us this one; given my unique malady, it more or less demanded a strip. It's a real thing you can seek out on your own time, after class. My position on anything like that - up to and including prayer, meditation, what have you - is that living in an intentional way is more likely to result in your goals being achieved. That said, I'm not sure that crystalline formations affect the upward face of a thrown die.