If you're into Half-life mods, you've probably heard of Natural Selection. To me, it's one of the greatest crossover genre games ever created, and I really enjoyed the first one.

Well, the team that made the original have decided to make another, more graphically up-to-date one (yeah, it looks great). They've been doing updates on their status via podcast/vidcast (since they got investors they've been doing vidcasts mostly). But yeah, it looks pretty good. Its gonna be a steam-distruibuted game(I think) even thought they've officially announced that they're making their own engine for the game, so they have more freedom with what they want in the game, even though the source engine license that they were using at first was pretty open(don't quote me on that)

So what I'm trying to tell you people is to check out the following link, because it's relevant to natural selection, one of the best mods ever made for any game.

http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/news/2008/10/unknown_worlds_videocast_5

(sorry if this is kinda incoherent, i don't really need to divulge into why i'm dead tired posting this at 4am　：）

So I've been on this website for the better part of a year now, seen it go through so awesome stuff (The Best Birthdayversery ever, some really bad ads, and a lot of other stuff that I'm sure everyone can think of that's happened since November/December of '07), and I'm happy to say that I've found my new home online. I don't post much, I kinda just idle in IRC, but I know this is where I belong now. The epiphany that I had while watching the PAX Panel was probably the weirdest, most enlightening video I've ever watched. I can't really explain it (but I'm gonna try!), and I love it.

So rewind to December of about 2004 or so, I was heavy into the Nintendo nsider forums (anyone? Anyone?), and I was pretty happy there. I slowly stopped going, as I was busy with marching band and other school related stuff. Then one day, during those amazing high school summer days (Well, not so amazing, but ya know...), I was incredibly bored, and I tried to go back to the forums, and they had deleted everything except the tech support forum. Needless to say I was shocked. The Nsider forums, in case you didn't know, were pretty active. Their fan fiction community was one of the best I've ever seen on the internet, and then all of a sudden, poof, gone. I didn't really know what to do at that point, I floated around to a couple of other forums and tried to get into them, but just couldn't.

Coming back to around November of last year, around the whole Cashwhore incident, my friend (who religiously followed gamestop), sent me some links to destructoid, Kotaku, and the like. I added the RSS feed of Destructoid's front page my bookmarks toolbar in Firefox because I liked the style of writing by most of the editors, and I didn't really have another source of gaming news or anything.



Well, one of the days when I was looking at the comments, I wondered well, I wonder if the links go to anything other than a profile? And sure enough, I stumbled upon the cblogs. It was like I stumbled upon a long lost library of ancient knowledge, with everyone's opinions about whatever they wanted to write about in the gaming world. I immediately made an account and started reading and commenting a little, not too much, but a little. I never made an intro post, but I did the lame little news posts occasionally with things that I thought were interesting that people didn't really know about, or that I didn't see on the site.

I also started going to the forums, but who cares about those right?



It was around the time of the Birthdayversery that I found out what this site really meant to some people. I don't remember who it was, but someone in IRC asked a very serious question to another community member, and that question was “What does Destructoid mean to you”. At which point I thought wow, that's deep.


I never really had the motivation to write this blog out until I watched the PAX panel the other day. Seeing the people behind the scenes of this great site in motion, talking about how they felt about the site that I spend so much time on, was incredible. Sure, I've seen pictures of them all before, and I'm sure it would've been more epic had I been there, but the video did it for me. I immediately thought: “Wow, this is exactly what my English teachers have been telling me for all these years (minus the grow some balls part, and the ridiculous visual aides).” And I couldn't help but think wow, this is the real deal, this is what's up, this is HOT! And here I am, writing this blog, finally. So thanks to Niero, Colette, Dale, Nick, and[size= 24]EVERYONE[/size] that makes this site as awesome and amazing as it is (yeah, that means you!)

If you have an able-bodied computer, own Half-Life 2: Episode 1 (which, if you have a computer that can run it and you're on this website, why the fuck don't you?), and like the single-player aspect of Half-Life, you should probably play Minerva. Probably one of the best single-player FPS experiences (besides Half-Life 2 and episodes, Bioshock, and a handful of others) in recent memory, Minerva has some of the best level design I've seen in a while, with amazing puzzles and a great, mysterious storyline that runs parallel to Half-Life's.

Anyway, enough about the mod, you can read the Valve Developer community article if you want to know more. The real reason of this post was to say that the creator, Adam Foster, recently posted on his blog that he will be working for Valve starting early October. This is exciting one, because we now know that Episode 3 isn't that far into development if they're still hiring people to work on it (BAWWW), and two, because Mr. Foster is a genius.

My only qualm with this is hopefully, Adam will finish off the Storyline he had going with Minerva. I'd be pretty upset if he just left the highly ambitious next chapter for vaporware.


SOURCE: http://www.hylobatidae.org/minerva/blogsheep.php?action=articleinfo&id=76

I remember in previous years (not last year so much, but more than this year) I would always be super excited and giddy around the time of E3. All of the companies would wait until that time of year to unload all of their new, secret games that they've been hush-hush about all year, and there would be a collective *head asplode* from everyone when Miyamoto came out onto the stage with the sword and shield from Zelda, big smile on his face when he announces the newest edition to the Zelda series, and the whole auditorium went crazy.



However this year there seems to be something missing. Maybe it's the fact that nintendo now has to cater to their new-found niche: everyone. I'm not just getting let down by nitnendo this year though, even the Microsoft announcements seemed kind of lackluster and toned down from what they should have been. We've all heard about pretty much everything (except FF XIII coming to Xbox) before the event, so it doesn't seem as incredible and amazing as it would have had we not known about it.

Maybe it's because the booth babes are gone, maybe the Internet just finally caught up with the rest of the world and has become SkyNet. Either way, I don't think E3 will ever be the same.

{I had started writing this a while ago, and finally dug it out and finished it and put the images to make it seem longer. Enjoy!}

I was driving to school last week, going a little over the speed limit as I was a little later than usual, and all of a sudden, I slow down. Without even questioning why I did it, I remember that there's a cop usually parked on the particular street that I was going down, hence, I slowed down so I wouldn't get a ticket. Now I wasn't going that much over the speed limit (no more than 5mph) but I still didn't want to get pulled over. I also noticed that my heart beat increased a little as I went by the cop, as though I knew that he was going to pull me over for doing something that I was justified in doing, but it was still wrong. Why am I afraid of getting pulled over? Could it be the way that our fine, uniformed law-enforcers are portrayed in the media? Maybe. Maybe...



One of the first games that I played growing up was Road Rash. I always remember this game being fun, beating down my opponents with chains and pipes and other weapons, all while going really fast on a motorcycle. What more could a child, nay, anyone want? Best game ever, 10/10. However, there was always one screen that irritated me more than anything...



I just wanted to keep racing! Why did the cops have to stop me? It's not like I'm hurting anyone - except for my opponents - by driving down the road as fast as possible on my bike. The cops were just a buzz kill in Road Rash, and this has always carried over for me in real life (like that one time I skipped school and got pulled over for running a stop sign :D). I don't want to piss my pants every time I see a cop, and I don't want to have to act like I'm not doing anything wrong when I'm not doing anything in the first place. I shouldn't be intimidated by the people that are supposed to be protecting me and upholding the law.

Another angle on this is the corrupt/bad cops in the real world. You know, the Officer that just had a bad day and wants to let out his/her stress on the 'perp' (who usually isn't really doing anything wrong). This doesn't phase me, as I know I'd get a huge chuck 'o change from the ensuing lawsuit. However, The thought of wasting all of that time - and the possibility that I might not win the case – just pisses me off to no end. The fact that one person's bad day can ruin my life, really bothers me. No one should ever have that much power over someone else's life on a whim, without any thought to it (well, except for maybe a sniper or something).

I guess I really just don't like having people watching over me, be it in games or in life. I ought to be able to do what I want, when I want with little to no repercussions as long as I'm not inflicting pain or damage on others (be it physical, emotional, or to their property). Wait, that's a giant oxymoron for most of what takes place in gaming, isn't it? Most games have you in the shoes of someone who is fighting against the establishment, and not following the rules. I guess Road Rash was trying to tell me not to get into motorcycle gangs, or to be a scientist involved in the opening of the portal that essentially destroyed the future of our planet (fucking Combine...).

Well, it isn't really that elaborate. While Etrian Odyssey is supposed to be the epitome of old-school rpgs, the naming follies that were made in the 8-bit days are no more. Atlus has a limit on the number of characters that they use in their names for memory reasons, and because of this, Japanese names that are literally translated into something much more elaborate have to be hacked down to something like 8 characters when they're Romanized. this brings on some very lame names, such as badglare.

Source: http://www.atlus.com/pd.php

I always find stuff like this interesting, because there were some REALLY bad names back in the golden days of RPGs, and some even more terrible localization of the dialogs. Now, my question to you, the readers: Do you think this toying around with the names affects the game, or does it really matter at all to you, because you just want to rapidly press the 'A' button through some menus, see some cool animations, and watch your Foes die?



EDIT: ROFLROFLROFL I SUCK!